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Friday, October 26, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Farming plan
Lawmakers should not treat small and corporate farmers equally when lowering federal subsidies
MEMBERS of Congress and Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeatter are
culture Clayton Yeutter are planning a new five-year farm subsidy plan. Negotiated separately from the federal budget, the proposed agriculture bill is $13 billion smaller than last five year bill would be spread over the next five years — a move many economists feel would have profound effects on owners of small farms.
U. S. senators Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum support the agriculture cut. While selfishly recognizing that farmers should not be exempt from a budget crunch, they and the other negotiators are considering an oversimplified answer to a complex problem.
The proposal is regressive, punishing small family farmers who, like their more wealthy corporate farm counterparts, face a 15 percent decrease in federal subsidy payments. For most farmers that translates into income reductions of as much as 10 percent. Corporate farmers are better able to absorb that bite than are small farmers, who are much more reliant on income from government-subsidized crops.
A fairer budget proposal would implement progressive subsidy cuts similar to our income tax structure. This should prevent corporate farmers from having control over agriculture
Are members of Congress and Agriculture Secretary Veetter too insulated by the large agriculture lobbies to see that U.S. markets may be consolidated into the hands of fewer
farmers? The family farmer is no match for the lobbyists in the tobacco and sugar industries, for example.
Participation in federal farm subsidy programs is voluntary. Many farmers, both corporate and individual, will drop out of the program because they earn more income following the free market
That is troublesome because the subsidy program includes several regulations that farmers not involved with the program can choose to ignore. Large cuts directed at small farmers will reduce participation in wetlands and soil conservation programs. Meanwhile, topsoil erosion, which reduces farming efficiency and strips the land of its fertility, will continue to worsen.
One aspect of the proposal is worthwhile. It would allow farmers more flexibility in planting, basing subsides on the total acres planted rather than individual crop acreage. The farmer could commit more land during a given year to a particular crop, such as corn, to compensate for a poor crop the previous year. That would stimulate agricultural trade among different areas and encourage farmers to plant what will produce best during a given year.
Otherwise, the $13 billion cut should be reshaped. Protecting the small farmers from corporate farm control with a progressive subsidy program would protect everyone else from further economic and political abuses by corporate farmers.
Sally Gibbs for the editorial board
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Article was misleading
I think your front page article in the Oct. 11 Kansan, entitled, "KU's minority percentage eighth among peer schools," was misleading. The article compared the University of Kansas to five peer institutions that were said to be "schools similar to KU in size and mission, with states being similar demographically, economically and in the manner that their systems of higher education are organized."
According to statistics from my 1990 World Almanac, in 1985 North Carolina's racial composition was 77.5 percent White and 22.5 percent Black. Using the figures for Black enrollment in your article, 8.6 percent of University of North Carolina students are Black.
According to the 1985 statistics for Kansas, 94.4 percent of the population was White and 5.6 percent was Black. The figures in your article indicate that 2.2 percent of the students at KU are Black.
While the University of North Carolina falls short by 13.9 percent of proportional representation for Black students, KU only falls short by 3.4 percent. If my reasoning and math are correct, Black students are better represented at KU in proportion to their state's racial composition than are their counterparts in North Carolina.
Ed Stamm Lawrence resident
Support our wetlands
An estimated 95 percent of our precious Kansas wetlands has been lost. Why are wetlands or marshes important? Not only do they cleanse
Roads are now the No.1 cause of the destruction of our state's wetlands. This is because the constructors of wetlands alter water wetlands alters drainage patterns.
the waters of our rivers and streams by removing sediments and chemicals, but they provide unique habitats for waterfowl and other wildlife.
The proposed South Lawrence Trafficway would hurt the Baker Wetlands, a National Natural Landmark at 31st and Haskell streets Twelve acres would be destroyed directly by the road, while drainage changes could affect the wetlands as a functioning ecosystem.
So, I urge all KU faculty, staff and students who are concerned about the environment to remember our efforts to work with others voting on the trafficway this Nov. 6.
No hydrological study has been undertaken to determine the road's effects on the wetlands.
Clark Coan Lawrence resident
...ANY QUESTIONS?..
Ex-Cub Factor overlooked
A's lose, disregard scientific evidence
it's make this short and sweet. The baseball season is over.
Nobody's going to beat the Oakland A's, whether we like it or not." Thomas Bossell, Washington Post.
"Sure as the sunrise, taxes and death, the Oakland Athletics will repeat as World Series champions" — Michael Collier, Oakland Tribune.
"It should take the Athletics as
"many as five games to win the World
Series." — Allan Malamud, Los
Angeles Times
How silly. The Reds didn't look the A's in the eye. They looked at the ball and hit it, which is far more effective than eve contact.
"A's in six." — Joe Goddard, Dave van Dyck, Brian Hewitt, Chicago Sun Times.
Yes, it is their fault, the boobs
Oh, I could go on and, filling this entire page and the next with the added predictions of alleged sports experts. All we heard before the Series began was how the awesome Oakland A's would maul, maim and mutilate anyone who dared set foot on the field with them.
"The Cincinnati Reds are a good team, but they will wilt in the Series. How can they look the A's in this game?" The Reds do well, the A's do better.
As it was put by the above-mentioned Thomas Bossell, considered the leading intellectual among base teachers in the city, being the tallest midget in the circus:
But is it really the fault of the nation's sportswriters that about 99 percent of them were so embarrassingly wrong?
Mike Royko
Syndicated columnist
Once again they chose to ignore the ExCub Factor. They scaffed at the scientific findings of Ron Berler, the discoverer of the amazing factor.
Berler is the Chicago teacher, writer and baseball nut who revealed in 1981 that it is almost impossible for any team with three or more ex Cubs on its roster to win the World Series. It's like a curse or a powerful virus. Three ex Cubs can make an entire team 'well, like genuine Cubs.
Since 1946, 13 teams afflicted with three ex-Cubs had entered the Series. Twelve of them lost
Now the A's have made it 13 out of 14.
This should not be any surprise to readers of this column. Before the Series began, I quoted Berler as saving:
"No matter who Oakland plays, they will be the overwhelming favorite to win. Oakland is already being teamed up with the team of this era—a dynasty team.
"But as good as they are, they will lose. And they can blame their own arrogance.
"They had the arrogance to defy the Ex-Cub Factor. Last year (when the A's won the Series) they had only two exCubs, so they were safe. But they couldn't leave well enough alone.
"They went out and got Scott Sanderson, a pitcher they didn't need, but who became the fatal third ex-Cub. He will be their undoing.
Even if he doesn't play, just by being there,he will do it.
"Tony LaLussa (the A's manager) is also an ex-Cub himself. And I think he is trying to overcome that sad episode in his life, that curse, by challenging the Ex-Cub Factor. And that's why the tormented fool went and got Sanderson. He thinks that if he can overcome the factor, he will somehow erase his own shameful stain. How foolish and how sad."
That was more than 10 days ago Now the Series is over, and Berler, the prophet, says:
"This was the greatest challenge the ExCub Factor ever faced. Intuitively, the factor itself knew it was being challenged. So what did it do?" It humiliated this A's team as no baseball has been histrionically played in baseball history.
'Who can doubt it anymore?
"The only thing I was afraid of was that CBS would be so worried about their ratings and profits that they'd go to Oakland just before the Series began and demand that they get rid of one of their ex Cubs."
Although Cub fans can take some satisfaction in knowing that their former heroes were instrumental in getting the Sesquicentennial Series, there is a negative side to it.
If they are to become a good team, the Cubs must get better players. And one of the ways they hope to do this is by making some shrewd general manager will be calling around to interest other teams in swaps.
But throughout the world of baseball, the question will be: "Would you buy a used Cub from this man?"
Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Other Voices
A worst-case scenario?
Beauty bar ad in timetable is 'clean' as far as sexism is concerned
Taxing the rich is a good idea.
Taxing the poor makes little sense
because the poor don't have any
interest. But if they had money, they
would be poor.
Republicans who cry out against "class warfare" are not against class warfare when it involves the middle class being forced by law to subsidize the rich
The worst thing higher upper-bracket taxes might do is convince financial wheel-delayers and lawyers to work a little less hard, a blessing to every life form on this planet.
From the Philadelphia Daily News
I guess the advertising mickwinks worked because I failed to see the Spring 1991 timetable ad as sexist. I merely thought it was an ad for a beauty bar that would make one's skin so clean and glowing that it would rival the transfigured Christ.
I naturally assumed that if one was advertising a beauty bar, one should show the final results, (i.e., the glowing skin), but maybe Dr. Banks is right — it's sexist. Next time the ad should emulate the Infinity car ads, and never, ever show the product.
The truth is, sex has been used to sell things since time immemorial. John Steinbeck, in "Grapes of Wrath," wrote about how Coca-Cola used a pretty blonde in its ads, and he wondered whether one got her with the Coke. The cause of the Trojan War was Helen of Troy. The reason for Helen's biological reason. It is more moral to say it was a trading rivalry that brought about the war.
Anyway, Helen wasn't too hard to look at from what I understand. It seems that physical
Michael Paul
Staff columnist
beauty was and is more respected than intellectual strength and that our society thinks highly of sex. People have sex like it's going out of style. So what's wrong with an attractive woman on a beauty bar ad? Or an attractive man, for that matter?
But then what exactly constitutes sexism? What if an ad showed a provocative and sophisticated woman with gorgeous blue eyes in a sharp business suit and black pumps?
Or what if, instead of a business suit, she wore a long, black dress that draped to her ankles, with a high collar and one of those stiff lace caps from those television shows about Salem witch trials. If I find that appealing, is that sexism?
Or say she's wearing a veil, with those
University Daily Kansen
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mysterious Arabic eyes peering out above it,
and that really turns me on. Is that sexism?
is that sexism?
whether she held a doctor in organic chemistry or whether she had any depth to her.
She was a model, paid thousands of dollars to flaunt something over which she has no control. She was born beautiful, and she enhanced it with glitter and polish showing how that beauty bar made her skin glow so the rest of us must wear sunglasses when we look at her I thought the ad on Navy nurses was gorgeous though with that destroyer in the back.
I found nothing sexist in the timetable at
Granted. I didn't look at the girl and wonder
ground and all, I wish someone would complain about that.
KANSAN STAFF
DEREK SCHMIDT
Editor
KJERSTIN GABRIELSON
Magazine editor
Editors
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
**EVENTS**
News | Julie Mettenburg
Editorial | Mary Neubauer
Planning | Pam Sollin
Campus | Holly Lawton
Sports | Brent Maycoy
Photo | Andrew Morrison
Features | Jessica Smith
Business staff
Campus sales mgr. ___ Chris Dool
Regional sales mgr. jackie Schmalzried
National sales mgr. ___ David Price
Co-op sales mgr. ___ Deborah Salzer
Production mgr. ___ Missy Miller
Production assistant ___ Julie Aikland
Marketing director ___ Audra Langford
Creative director ___ Gail Einbinder
Mike Paul is a Manhattan sophomore majoring in journalism and political science.
MARGARET TOWNSEND
Business manager
MINDY MORRIS %
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing adviser
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...SO I GET OFF
THE WUSS, DIRT AND
ALL OF THE SUDEN
I HEAR GOU GUY
WHIZZING BY ON
A SKATBOARD YELLOW,
AT THE TOP OF
HIS LUNGS.
YOU'RE LOOKING AT ME LIKE YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME.
HEV, HERE COMES CASSIE. HOLD UP
(Hi, GANG) HEY, CASSIE, WHAT'S UP WITH VIC?
WELL, CONVERSATION LAKED
BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW EACH
OTHER TIME. VET AND, THINK
WE HAKEN US. BURNER
THAN! RIALLY AM I