September 19, 1984
OPINION
Page 4.
BREACH
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
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Gromyko visit
The political football again took a Reagan bounce last weekend after a flurry of polls showed the incumbent president far ahead of Walter Mondale.
But Mondale's immediate response — a scheduled meeting next week with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko — is a desperation toss that is more likely to hurt his own campaign than help it.
Mondale, professing to emphasize the importance of renewed negotiations, arranged to meet Gromyko one day before President Reagan is to meet with the longtime Soviet envoy. But Mondale says his visit is merely a discussion—and in no way an attempt to meddle in the president's affair.
Still, any Mondale-Gromyko visit might be perceived as meddling for two reasons:
First, the fact that Soviet and U.S. leaders now are determined to talk suggest that the Kremlin views Reagan as the likely winner. Many view Gromyko's visit with Reagan as a welcome attempt by both sides to revive U.S.-Soviet relations, which chilled last year when the Soviets walked out of talks in Geneva on intermediate nuclear weapons.
Second. Mondale's meeting calls to mind Jesse Jackson's foray this year to Syria on behalf of the parents of a captured American pilot. The two situations aren't entirely analogous, but they violate the same principle; the country's foreign policy is the responsibility of the presidential candidate now in office.
Mondale's decision to risk facing the wrath of the president to gain the country's attention might be considered wise, considering his position in the polls. Yet the odds might not be so great had he chosen to stay away from Gromyko in favor of criticizing what little is expected to come from Reagan's meeting.
National security is traditionally defined as the freedom from fear of attack and privation. Although our national leaders give verbal support to this conservative ideal, federal energy policies that favor conveniences energy systems are undermining the basis for sustainable security.
U.S. energy policies threaten security
U. S. dependency on Middle East oil has jumped to percent above 1983 levels for the first half of 1984. Instead of pursuing the least-cost strategy of attaining national energy autonomy through an increase in military spending, it allows pumps into the hands of the Pentagon, which has threatened the use of nuclear weapons should Soviet tanks invade the oil fields.
George Shultz, secretary of state,
and Caspar Weinberger, secretary of
defense, have vested interests in
nuclear developments because they
were the respective president and
vice president of the Bechtel Group
Inc., the free world's foremost
nuclear-power construction firm.
As the two most powerful men in the Cabinet, it is not surprising that the executive branch refuses to recognize the link between nuclear power and nuclear arms proliferation.
Despite a host of exorbitant federal subsidies for nuclear electric utilities, every reactor ordered since 1974 has been canceled. The cost has been staggering; in 1982, nuclear construction consumed three times what the United States invested in the auto industry.
Reagan served the industry in April by arranging the sale of two canceled U.S. reactors to the Chinese Taxpayers have already been ordered to sell through the Export Import Bank to sell other uncompetitive reactors.
Terrorists have not yet used nuclear weaponry, but the use of conventional sabotage is on the rise.
By forcing the public to underwrite the financing of these two plants; Reagan continues a policy that pads the accounts of administration associates and threatens to bankrupt the nation by increasing the federal deficit. Furthermore, the policy increases the international transport of fissionable materials, thus inviting the clandestine proliferation of nuclear weapons with which terrorists could assault our nation.
The United States is one of 50 nations that have recently experienced atacks on centralized power stations. The Department of Energy has responded with the establishment of
a departmental Training Academy, in which 900 personnel will graduate annually with "degrees" in such areas as "Arrest and Use of Deadly Force," "Officer Survival" and "Exploit Device (Ordinance)" to ensure that we maintain the remarkable our increasingly centralized energy systems are becoming.
Another form of power-plant vulnerability results from the effects of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that would emanate from the detonation of a nuclear device at an altitude of 390 miles. A single hydrogen bomb could blast the entire lower 48 states and permanently damage all unprotected integrated circuits. All conventional electricity, oil and natural gas distribution and civilian communications systems hadaid. Results of the Pentagon's 1982 accident on an EMP might cause the simultaneous core meltdowns of 200 nuclear plants have been classified, yet the scientists involved in the study are very concerned.
St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press Dispatch
Characteristic of a leadership that has intensified the most massive arms race in human history, the administration envisions a $28 billion armada of anti-ballistic missile satellites to quell EMP vulnerability among US forces. The U.S.-Soviet agreements and would not provide EMP protection.
Defense systems featuring nuclear-fueled laser weapons, if they were not incapacitated by easily built countermeasures, would destroy 90 percent of incoming missiles at best. The remaining 10 percent could cause national paralysis from EMP
Given Latin America's often violent contrasts and divisions, it is not entirely surprising that advocates of liberation theology have come to talk in the absolute terms of class struggle. Nevertheless, the Vatican's rejection of wrong ways of righting Latin American wrongs is acute.
These mindless policies result from the power of financial interests to exploit politicians. They waste revenues on unnecessary centralized energy systems and waste more money trying to protect those systems from attack.[11]
The fact that Marxists have failed to keep their liberating vow everywhere they have intruded is not enough to deter disciples. The fact that an unfortunate portion of church people, particularly in Latin America, have contorted Roman Catholic theology to accommodate Marxist theory has rightly prompted the Vatican to denounce what, at root, is an absurd melding.
A true free market in energy would not subsidize fossil and synthetic fuels or centralized electric power, including nuclear reactors. This would reduce the federal deficit and create a more diversified market that would increase the compartmental strategies to resilient technologies, storage, fuel compensation, wind power, biomass, solar thermal and photovoltaics.
Faith and politics
Stable security is not lostered through the draining of money into vulnerable energy systems and unfeasible weapons systems. As we pull deeper into the nuclear vortex that threatens not only the existence of this nation but the existence of countless unborn generations of the human family, we need the ability to sort illusion from truth.
It is contradictory, but not rare, for those who are hungry and not free, as well as those who agonize over the desperation of others, to take simultaneous hope in the calls of both religion and Marxism.
Philip White, Dodge City senior, i majoring in mechanical engineering
Hidden dangers of comparable worth
A bill that was passed by an overwhelming majority in the House and now is in the hands of the Senate could add a new twist to the existing law that requires equal pay for equal work
The bill potentially a gender gap issue in the presidential election, would require pay scales to be adjusted so that jobs demanding similar skills with similar working conditions would pay the same salary.
Police dispatchers, then, who are traditionally female, might be paid the same salary as fire dispatchers, who are traditionally male and earn a higher salary as secretaries. A police officer is equal to an electrician, which now earns more
comparable-worth but won't get
Pandora's Box filled with subjective
judgments, big money litigation and
Catch: 225.
Now, I'm for uncovering discrepancies in the equal-pay-for-equal
JENNIFER FINE
Staff Columnist
work law just as much, or maybe more, than the next soapbox feminist. But this latest idea goes beyond the previous law to equal pay for comparable work.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
South Africa deals with unique conditions
To the editor:
During this week designed to highlight the Republic of South Africa and the policy of apartheid, it is important for the readers to be exposed to a rational description of the events facing the people of that country. The content of the social issue is often shrouded in emotional journalism
The problems facing this country are unique, and no parallel, with respect to the political situation, can be found elsewhere in the world. It is pertinent to consider Zimbabwe, a country north of South Africa, which underwent a political transition four years ago from a white-minority government to its present black-maintenance government.
This step was hailed by the world as the only means of improving the quality of life in that country. However, the capacity of this country to compete now in the world marketplace has diminished, its economy is rapidly declining and it is to become a one-party Marxist state.
White South Africans are considered outcasts of the world community. It is rather ironic that the Republic of South Africa was expelled from the United Nations, of which she was a founding member country. Her athletes are barred from the Olympics and often from the international arena. South Africa now faces oil and arms embargoes
Black-based democracy is a system still to be proven successful in an African milieu.
The main criticism of South Africa is the policy of apartheid (separate development) and the governing of the country by the white minority. Unfortunately, the world at large does not understand the basis for this policy and as such does not appreciate the basis for its implementation.
placed against her by the countries she supported during both world wars, as well as the Korean war
The rationale for this separate development is based on the large cultural differences found among the peoples of South Africa. The white Africans of European descent have the traditional values of the Western world and most of their black counterparts have differing values. The main problems facing the peoples of South Africa today stem from the differing cultural values held by her different peoples.
These hardships placed on the people will not change the present situation, but only aggravate it and inhibit future progress.
In "America: A Minority Viewpoint," Walter E. Williams writes, "Blacks who live in South Africa are better housed, better paid, better educated, have a longer life expectancy and have better personal security than blacks in nearly every other African country."
This does not imply that the black South Africans are not faced with problems, nor are their white counterparts. Changes are in progress in the country at this very moment; given time, some compassion from
the world community, and less interference, these problems will be solved for the good of all South Africans.
The unquestioned usage of the term "principle" in Charles Himmelberg's column (Sept. 10, "Students can back financial aid cuts") leads me to wonder whether those "cool" conservatives have a realistic view of U.S. society in its present state.
Lawrence graduate student
Student aid facts
D. G. Muller
To the editor:
Himmelberg determines that students must be willing to impede their pursuit of a higher education in order to contribute to their country and themselves by becoming fiscally austerne and adhering to "principle."
In light of what the government of the past four years has done to the defect, it is only in our best interest to accept ects in financial aid. These actions should be restored and should be restored when the deficit has been brought under rein.
Usage of the term 'principle' however, is erroneous. Every individual has a guarded privilege to pursue an education if he so chooses. Our technologically burgeoning society requires that many so choose.
For the many who don't count among their possessions obese bank accounts, an education is but a
tenuous reality built upon save, pennies. For these people, losses of Pell Grants and federal student loans would only yield the privation of their opportunity to achieve a post-secondary education.
At a time when a high-school education offers an individual few opportunities for employment in a society firmly entrenched in the computer age, the statement that a higher education is a private enrichment and of little good to society is anachronistic.
Many students who have received necessary funding are making important contributions to society, and if we turn away the equally dispossessed students further even our friends, the principled few (or better, the conservatives).
Therefore, the percentage of my neighbor's tax dollars spent on higher education is well spent, because our highly mechanized society would come to a stop if it didn't educate its highly educated fodder.
Although financial aid might not be a right in the strictest sense of the word — for it is only a social program and is cowering under the conservatives' ax, as are its brethren — it must certainly be a public good. When one understands the position of the taxpayer, you can poorer students, one must admit that the taxpayer has and will receive his money's worth.
Michael O'Rourke Smith Center senior
Although it appears to be a step forward in the uphill climb to equality, a requirement of equal pay could still be the push for equal opportunity by encouraging women to stay in traditionally female occupations, thereby reinforcing existing stereotypes.
Moreover, for equal pay, men may be encouraged to try some of the traditionally female jobs, and the slightest remander of the "weaker sex" attitude could force women out of jobs.
Assessments would determine what jobs were comparable.
A point system could never determine how many years of schooling would equal the physical labor and training involved in some equipment operation jobs.
Another problem would arise when people decided that their occupation was at the end of the workday.
Worth is not something easily measured Teachers, journalists, even telephone operators are worth more to me than any professional baseball player, why should baseball players be paid so much more?
That, of course, is my opinion. Others are probably glad that the value of journalists and baseball
Economists are estimating that the measure would cost the economy more than $ 100 million.
every ultimately is determined by our choices in the marketplace, and not by someone's opinion.
Women who think that they are discriminated against could join together to air grievances and bargain with their employers. That after all, led to organizations formed specifically for dealing with disputes with employers — that wonderful concept of labor unions.
or maybe females should consider learning to drive a truck, be an electrician or operate heavy equipment
If the government wants to jump on the wage-gap issue, it should do so by developing better methods of enforcing the equal pay law.
Million dollar lawsuits already have resulted from the concept of comparable worth. Consider the ruling, which will probably be appealed, by a Washington state judge, the ruling demanded that $500 million, give or take a few million, be paid in back wages to female state officials and they were not being paid fairly because of sex discrimination.
WASHINGTON — Sen Bob Dole, R Kan., was right on the mark when he looked at Walter Mondale's defect-cutting plan last week and said he would be a presidential candidate "going after the middle-income taxpayer."
Fight for middle class
As a fiscal program, the Mondale proposal may or may not be the ticket to reduce mounting federal deficits, as a political document, it has to be one of the most artificially crafted efforts to seize the initiative that has been built since Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 declaration: "I will go to Korea."
In the decades immediately after the Great Depression, people in the lower reaches of the middle class (renters, savers, hourly wage work people) were disillusioned with the poor than with the rich. And generally them Democrats.
than poverty. In 1880, that delivered them to the Republicans.
It is designed to drive a wedge between President Reagan and the great mass of Americans whose incomes place them above poverty.
After the social upheavals of the 1980s and the economic increases of the 1970s, the lower middle class (now owners, buyers, salaried employees) began to regard itself as more closely related to affluence
To break what increasingly is looking like a Reagan lock on the 1984 election, Mondale needs to bring the lower middle class back to the center of society, and that it he can convince individuals and families who have incomes
ARNOLD
SAWISLAK
United Press International
roughly between $20,000 and $40,000 that those with incomes of $30,000 to $100,000 are not paying their fair share of taxes.
The Demerals have been trying for three years to sell the idea that the Roigan economic policies were bad. The rich benefit from the rich at the expense of the poor.
Mondale is going at it in a somewhat different way. He is arguing that (1) the $200 billion plus federal deficits must be reduced; (2) no matter who wins the election, they should not increase; (3) the burden of the increase should be heaviest on the people with incomes of, say, $30,000 and above.