UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
September 8,1978
Liquor attitudes absurd
It appears that a majority of Kansans are content with the state's Carry Nation attitude toward liquor by the drink.
At least one could assume that with the passing of yesterday's deadline for ballot petitions on county-option liquor by the drink in restaurants. It looks as if only one-fifth of Kansas' 105 counties will have the issue on their Nov. 7 ballots, although it will take weeks to certify the petitions and to determine the exact number of counties involved.
The fact remains, however, that citizens were given the opportunity to put the liquor question to a vote. But in 80 percent of the counties, people lacked the initiative to secure a petition and obtain the necessary signatures of 5 percent of the registered voters in the county.
People in those 80-old counties who bemoan the absence of wine or a cocktail with their dinners at local restaurants can blame no one but themselves, providing the Kansas Supreme Court does not rule the new law unconstitutional this fall.
The Kansas Legislature authorized that, in counties which approved the liquor question Nov. 7, liquor could be served in restaurants where food sales account for at least 50 percent of their income. But the state supreme court has yet to rule on whether the law violates the state's constitutional ban on "open saisons."
Adding to the fury already surrounding the liquor issue, a
statewide poll by the Topeka Capital Journal this week reported that 58 percent of the voters favored the liquor in restaurants bill.
KANSAS VOTERS, if one accepts the poll, favor liquor-by-the-drink in restaurants, but a majority of the counties will not have the question on their general election ballots.
The two statements would appear paradoxical, but they can be reconciled if one considers the state's absurd luor situation.
A loophole in the open saloon prohibition seems to be responsible, in large part, for the reluctance of people to place the liquor issue on the ballot. Most people know that loophole: the private club.
That convenient little loophole, which in effect allows a disguised open saloon, has and will continue to hamper efforts to significantly change state liquor laws. Private clubs, for a certain membership fee, provide liquor-by-the-drink where it otherwise would be unavailable—both to members and often, illegally, to non-members.
PERHAPS IF THE state truly banned "open saloons," the jolt would stir citizens to action and people would finally mandate an overhaul of the state's maze of archaic liquor laws.
Thus far, no reasonable reform measures have been successful in the drive for a "wet" and sane Kansas, as the current liquor question illustrates. Perhaps Kansans need a kick in the pants.
Is Billy Graham worth almost $23 million? For years, skeptical observers and critics have asked this question, but there has been little research on people like Graham who call for people to come forward to make "public decisions" for Jesus Christ.
Religious evangelists like Graham are making money. Big money. And the corpse is doing it.
According to the Wall Street Journal, only 20 radio stations and a single television station had religious broadcasting as recently as 15 years ago. Now, 325 radio stations, and all of their stations have such programming. At 25 more TV stations, it is the planning stages.
Graham increasingly has been the subject of criticism.
Graham's pocketbook runneth over
LAST YEAR, he came under attack after news accounts publicized an alleged scheme 'fund of nearly $23 million Gramah secured.' He said the organization had stopped talking about the fund partly because it was receiving more requests for donations that were not.
"I would think there would be more personal attacks," he said earlier this year. "More reporters are trying to make a name for the mission." The Gospel has coral under persecution."
Then, last month, a news story accused the Graham Association's World Evangelism and Christian Education fund to have paid off $470,000 of a tract of land near Asheville, N.C.
GRAHAM'S ASSOCIATION in Minnesota said this week that his yearly salary was listed as $39,500. A spokesman said he did not receive a penny of the money gathered during his 11 crusades a year, including the most recent one held last week in Kansas
However, they did not mention that he is president of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, a non-profit, tax exempt group that collected its total income last year as $2.7 million.
Broadcasting is a key element in the German ministries' production and radio and TV broadcast cost. 88%
According to a balance sheet filed with the Minnesota Securities Division, the association spent $10.4 million last year, or 38 percent of its budget, on "evangelism."
OF THAT amount, $5.6 million was spent for mail handling, literature and crudes
U.S., Russian allies intervening in Eritrean secessionist struggle
N. Y. Times Feature
LONDON—The war by proxy between the United States and the Soviet Union in Africa has spread to the Horn, and the Eritrean guerrilla movement has become the victim of the struggle for allies and clients.
Washington's policy of non-involvement, based on the belief that the Russians will burn their fingers in Ethiopia, is beginning to change with the supply of American arms to Somalia and the involvement of the "allies" like Saudi Arabia and Iran, in the Eritrean armed struggle.
Bv David Pool
Iranian and Saudi moves are aimed not simply at combating Soviet and Cuban support for the Mengisth regime in Adib Aba but also at countering the increasing powerful position of the Islamic State (ISIL) in the Gulf (LF), which controls most of the 1,000-kilometre Ertan Red Sea coast.
THE EMERGENCE of the EPLF as the stronger of the two guerrilla fronts, with the capture of the big towns during 1977, saw a corresponding weakening of the rival EPL. This relative weakness enabled the guerrillas to concentrate and adent at gainning publicity, but with limited military support.
fighters deserted to the EPLF and about 1,000 fled to Khartoum to attempt a difficult struggle between those who opposed unity with Sabbé, and their enemy.
WITH A STRONG Soviet position in Ethiopia, and South Yemen now more firmly in the Soviet orbit, the Saudis have added an Eritrean client to what is an emergency pre-war and modern military base. The Saudi missile link the missing link in a chain which included Somalia, Djibouti, Sultan Al Mirrān, traditional chief of the Afar tribe which stretches across Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the southeastern tip of Eritrea, Sudan and
The Saudis' man in Eritrea is Osman Salih Sabbe, former head of the EPLF's foreign mission until he was expelled in 1978 by the field commanders. Since then he made a concerted effort to gain a position in Eritrea, and it was only last year that he was able to do so, as a consequence of tensions between the EPLF and the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).
But the fact that the money is made by selling religion is irksome. Graham's crusades have a basic pattern: one half of the evening is a pleas for money to meet the host, and the other half is a 'cums on up style' calling people to the podium to find Christ.
The ELF leadership, increasingly disorganized, annulled its agreement with Sabbe and began unity talks with the EPLF. A preliminary agreement was signed between the two fronts in October 1977, and a more detailed one in March this year.
ALTHOUGH IRAN IS training about 100 fighters for Sabre, it is the Saudis who are playing the key role in the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia, which gave the EPLF financial assistance last year, now supports only Sabri. Military and medical assistance to the EPLF from Arab states and the Palestinian organizations is now no longer permitted to pass from Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea.
WETHERTH SAUDI POLICY of opposing the EPLF and bolstering Sabbe's role inside Eritrea will be successful is another question. Although three members of the ELF leadership based in Dankalia went over to Sabbe in May, it is unlikely that his group would be able to make any military headway in Eritrea with the joint opposition of the EPLF and ELF.
FET, RATHER THAN strengthening ELF, unity with the controversial Sabbe had the opposite effect. In August 1977, 1,200 ELF
The union gave Sabie his chance to establish a presence inside Eritrea. His ELF-PLF force of about 1,000 fighters participated in the capture of Agordat and, prior to Eritrean withdrawal last month, in the occupation, controlled the government quarter of the town.
RECENT REPORTS FROM Eritrea suggest that Sabbe's fighters, excluded from the March unity agreement, split over whether to participate in fighting against the Ethiopian army with ELF, and that a group of 209 joined ELF.
At Royals Stadium Monday night,
Caitlin told the crowd that the audience and he
felt comfortable.
The Ethiopian re-occupation of the evacuated towns will bring greater hardship to the civilian population, who are becoming a nation of refugees and displaced persons. Yet the return of the Ethiopian army also brings with it arms, ammunition and other supplies, easy pickings for guerrilla attacks on convoys passing through the mountains and gorges of the Eritrean highlands.
Taxed by Arm's finding about the Seattle crusade, Graham mildly observed that the percentage of people who are at least 85 percent full than 85 percent empty. On the other hand, how many preachers do you know who can produce 1,285 new church students and spend at least $2 million a year doing it?
Brian Settle
The EPLF controls the east, which includes the heavily populated highlands, and the rugged northern Sahel province. The area is far better suited for guerrilla fighting, and their political and military organization is more efficient and better disciplined. It will be able better to withstand the Soviet and Cuban-backed offensive and to return to more mobile guerrilla tactics.
by eight associate evangelists. Graham's 11 cruades a year are self-supporting.
Saudi Arabia's attempt to influence events in Eritrea has gone seriously wrong. Supporting Sabbe and opposing the EPLF can only facilitate what has been its most important objective: blocking the establishment of the pro-Soviet Ethiopia along the red Sea.
It makes one wonder what the money is used for. Is he worth all those dollars? It seems the only way to decide objectively is by studying his success in "saving" people.
Last year, a study done by Baptist research executive Win Arm showed that only 15 percent of the people who Graham saved were active church members. Someone had remained active church members.
About $3.8 million of the ministries budget went to a World Evangelism and Christian Education Fund, with a share of 17%. With cash assets of $2.3 million, this fund already has transferred $7 million to Graham's alma mater, Wheston College, Wheaton, Ill., for a Graham Center grant.
About $8 million of the building fund is earmarked for Wheaton's graduate school to teach evangelists how to use modern mass media. The fund also owns 1,000 acres of land near Ashville that might be used for a layman's retreat center.
It is necessary for that much money to be accumulated while spreading the gospel to those who are interested.
FROM THE REST of the ministries budget,
$942,000 to Wheaton College, $209,000 to other religious organizations and almost
$21,000 to other affiliates.
David Pool is a lecturer in Middle East politics at Manchester University in England.
THE BUSINESS knowledge of Graham and his association is to be admired. Anyone or any business who can accumulate that knowledge will be off than the vast majority of Americans.
The association's balance sheet also shows $2.5 million for foreign cruises and shows $1.3 billion for new bookings.
A BOARD of 26 businessmen, financiers, clergymen and lawyers guides the association. An executive committee that budget every six weeks keeps tabs on the busi-
It's bothersome that his second sentence—and the next half-hour of the crusade—involve pleas for and collection more than $23 million or more that he will produce this year.
Figures can be deceiving and misleading. What these figures mean is that Billy Graham and his association are making a large profit on their book; only gets $29,500 a year from such a budget.
In one year, the association mails 100 million to 125 million pieces of mail, including 25 million appeals for funds. Another 25 million is mailed to 4 million people each month.
magazine, $1.4 million for administration and $1.5 million for postage.
The board chairman is Allan Eman Jr., a director of Service Master Industries, Boston. The committee treasurer is Robert Van Kampen, a banking consultant in Santa Ana.
The organization that he is president of made at least $23 million last year, the company said.
Corporate tax increase no solution
To the Editor:
It that’s what you call a real break for the individual, Mr. Winthesides. I’d say you have to get it over and out.
A few of the more substantive issues in John Whiteiside's Sept. 5 editorial, "Kansans Copy Latest California Fad," merit some response.
Whitesides contends that tax limitation movements following in the wake of California's Proposition 13 are backing Trojan Horses and will merely exacerbate an already worsening climate. Mr. Whitesides tells us, is to increase the corporate tax burden.
Taxes should, of course, be equitable. As a group, the middle class represents the largest body of taxable resources and also enjoys the greatest benefits of public expenditures. Hence, under either community or individual circumstances, these people should bear the largest burden.
These people are not likely to stuff the money in a mattress. It will be invested, hopefully, stimulate the economy to provide jobs and create revenue to budget deficit or loss of services by reducing welfare expenditures and increasing tax receipts from other, less regressive sources. It is, therefore, unlikely that cutbacks in the provision of essential public services should happen.
Econometric analysis by Prof. Arthur Laffer of the University of Southern California predicts a $700 million net increase in property and local tax revenues from promotion 13.
LASTLY, NO INDIVIDUAL will ever benefit from increasing the corporate tax burden. Companies must never have, and never will pay a penny of tax. Higher corporate taxes are always passed on in the form of smaller dividends to stockholders. That retards new capital and results in lower prices for consumers or lower wages for workers.
Alan Welch Halstead senlor
THIS ARGUMENT notwithstanding, let us suppose Whitesides is correct in his assertion that two-thirds of the property tax relief will go to corporate property owners, and the other two-thirds to desirable "careers"—that the vast majority of stockholders belongs to upper income classes.
Convocation disrupts first-day's schedule
To the editor :
I feel strongly that very little notice and information was given to the disruption the chancellor's convoitation speech gave to morning classes on August 28. The only
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
I would suggest that the convolution be scheduled on a day having no classes, such as the Sunday before, or suggest canceling classes for that morning.
the thing that mentions scheduled changes is the timetable, and it isn't easy to obtain.
I thought I was on time when I arrived at 8:25 a.m. for my 8:30 a.m. class, but found out I was 10 minutes late because it had been rescheduled for 8:15 a.m. that morning. A professor I know came to his 8:30 a.m. class at 9:15 a.m., and the 20 minutes after convocation had started.
IF WE MUST, I repeat must, have
Also, all bulletin boards in all buildings should have large posters telling the morning schedules. This would help make them more informed about convocation mornings.
the enemy. I sincerely hope that a senator can be found that would eliminate the problem.
rescheduled convocation morning classes in future years, I would suggest all advisers be required to tell their students of the bizarre morning schedule.
Paul A.F. Schmidt Wichita senior
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