UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorslals
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors.
September 20,1979
Raise judges' salaries
The Kansas judicial system has been ignored for far too long by the Kansas Legislature, which has consistently judged judges in the state decoral salaries.
Kansas judges rank 43rd nationally on a per capita personal income although Kansas ranked 17th nationally in 1977 in overall per capita personal income. That discrepancy in large part is due to the Legislature's inattentiveness to the importance of our judicial system.
The Legislature, under a long-range pay plan, agreed two years ago to raise, by 1982, the Kansas Supreme Court chief justice's salary to $44,000 and the Supreme Court justices' salaries to $43,000.
ALTOUGH THOSE salaries will be an improvement over the current salaries of $7,250 for the chief justice and $38,250 for the justices, they are a far cry from what other states' justices receive from their jobs from what ours should be earning.
Just next door, the Missouri chief justice earns $25,000 a year and the justices earn $50,000. Not only that, Kansas City, Mo., municipal judges—among others—earn more than the Kansas chief justice with their $7,700 yearly pay.
What Missouri and other states have
realized is that their system of justice improves with better judges; good judges often were good lawyers previously; and good lawyers are unlikely to leave successful private courts because judges unite the pavilion is right.
LUCKILY. THE problem of judicial salaries has not gone completely unrecognized.
The salary problem will be tackled by a reconstituted 12-member Citizens Committee on Judicial Compensation, which is beginning its second study in two years on salaries for the Kansas judiciary. It was that committee that recommended to the Legislature two judges, 44,500 and the justices $44,500, and the justices $43,000, only to have the Legislature implement those salaries over a period of five years.
The committee, which comprises four appointments made by the chief justice, the speaker of the Kansas House and the president of the Senate, is likely once again recommend that the Legislature raise judges' salaries to reasonable levels -levels that will attract good legal minds to the Kansas bench instead of making them shy away from it.
Only this time around, it is hoped that the Legislature will realize the importance of adopting the committee's recommendation.
Iranian values differ from Western outlook
Deserves No U.S. Weapon Aid" by David Preston in an esteemed University newspaper such as the Kansan.
Priston says that the situation in Iran is *perplexing to those of us who have tried to maintain an objective view*. It is certainly not the case that Islam and Iran is limited. Who or what are Mr. Priston's sources? As Meg Greenfield wrote in Newweek, Americans tend to conder that which does not fit into their understanding, because they do not comprehend.
Protest content that the problem is that "the church is controlling the state". Separation of the church and state was one of the great political problems of post-colonial political system. But what is good for one society is not necessarily good for another. In Islam there is no separation between the state and religion, for Islam is a total way of Muslims. Moslems of Iran accept this premise.
MOREOVER, IN Iran Moslems are a majority and it is a homogeneously country where minorities are guaranteed access to the state and separation of the state and church was necessary because of the proliferation of sects and the intolerance and friction that
Preston lacks accurate information about Iran. He says there are mass protests against Khomeni and the people are no longer dissatisfied, and there existed, there would have been another revolution in Iran. The Islamic revolution in Iran was a revolution of the people. Millions of Iranians were killed, and who was supported by the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, and Israel? It is difficult to identify technologies and weapons. It would much easier to stage a revolution today since this could be supported by forces from the country, in a country that is still unaware.
Yes, in disarray. The Iranians have launched an unprecedented attempt. They are trying to transform Iran into an Islamic state. But a strong reaction had happened in Iran was not a coup d'etat but a revolution in every sense of the word. How long did it take the American people to establish a state government? Was not the American Revolution in 1775-1781 and the French Revolution in 1794?
Preston says that there are 3,500,000 people unemployed in Iran from today. but he does not mention how many unemployed have been executed after the revolution. He says there have been executions after the revolution, but he does not mention that those who were executed were only executed after fair trials and not by a military murder and mutilated innocent people.
Because a country has called for independence and sovereignty and wishes to run its own internal affairs, this is a reason to demand a cut in aid to it?
He calls the Kurdish secession a "noble task." The Kurds in Iranian land and elsewhere have long suffered under sovereign state and has the right to subdue any secessionist movement within its borders. Worsened by the U.S. government allow a minority group to secede and establish an independent nation.
It is not in the interest of the United States to lose Iran for short-sighted chavistic reasons. If Iran is lost, the United States will
osean. Ize still supplies the United States with oil and it is located in an area that is becoming more aligned with the Soviet bloc. Iran's strategic military position is vital for maintaining security in the Islamic nation but it is incompatible with the Islamic government that has been established. If an Islamic government that is strongly would be alignment with the communities.
So Mr. Preston, get your facts straight and understand that Islam calls for justice, democracy and freedom. Do not condemn a movement because it is different or because a people have chosen not to be subservient to any foreign power.
President, KU Moslem Student Association
Editorial misses point of Iranian question
To the Editor:
In accordance with the bias in the American press, David Preston wrote an anti-Japan editorial appearing in the Sept. 6 Kansan. The important question about Iran's government is not whether an American, David Preston, preferred the present government or rather whether the present government enjoys the support of the Iranian people.
Mark Cline
Medicine Lodge junior
President Carter's energy programs long have been considered nothing but pure garbage by many congressmen and by a part of the American public. But perhaps that is exactly what his energy programs are missing in the modern marsh, trash and other organic matter.
To the Editor:
Kansan front page perpetuates sexism
The front page of the Kansan of Thursday, Sept. 13 was very interesting, featuring as it did a portrait of a former ponder future of KU sports after Title XR ruling" next to a photograph of a woman playing tennis in a T-shirt with writing on it, now you play the game. "It's how you look."
The juxtaposition suggests one of the effects of sexism in our society today. Some men and women confuse the identity of women today with whether or not their gender is masculine, which has no appearance. On the other hand, the identity of most men does not rest quite so thoroughly on their looks, but also on accomplishments, skills and personality. One of the more negative effects of sexism is that sometimes money they earn may be to depend on how much money they earn.
It seems to me that we all ought to strive for a society in which we can throw away old fashioned, stereotyped values and qualities of each human being, each person's own particular physical beauty, in order to be able to grow.
What I am referring to is methane, a relatively unknown source of energy, but it can be used in nuclear power, solar energy and wind power. Methane, a source of energy that, although not fully considered in Carter programs, could help resolve our energy pre-
Methane could beat energy blues
Methane is a form of natural gas produced from garbage, trash, vegetation and other organic matter.
Women's Resource and Career Center
Barbara Bloom
Director, Emily Taylor
THAS has received little littermight compared to such big-name stars as nuclear power and solar power, which overshadow it in the country faced with a long-range energy crisis.
But methane is beginning to be recognized as an important source of energy throughout the world. It is being used as a reliable supplement by severe nations, such as Japan.
In the United States, several major cities, including Chicago and Boston, are using methane as a greenhouse gas energy for residential heating. And a methane-run power plant has been considered in New York City; a plant that uses methane to produce waste of the nolecule produces there each day.
THIS ORGANIC energy account for less than 1 percent of the total energy there have been predictions that it could account for 20 percent within two years if it was developed further and used on a mass scale.
Although it is a relatively new and undeveloped form of energy, it offers many advantages over other forms of energy. For example, it doesn't pose public safety hazards, pollute the environment or involve coal, nuclear power or solar energy.
Methane is a very practical and feasible alternative form of energy that needs to be produced in the context of nuclear or solar power plants are built. The following facts about methane clearly show its value.
- METHANE would reduce waste, financial costs and put an end to the problem of methane release from biogas plant bogs and trash can be used in making this fuel, many of the ugly landfills across the country are being built.
- Also, the treatment costs for making garbage and biomass safe to dump in rivers and lakes are increased because they do not have to be chemically treated in the production of methane. This is a very important factor for supporting the country, but also a tremendous financial savings of millions of dollars a year.
- *This form of energy also could be used to benefit the farmer. If crops were in part to produce the gas, farmers could sell
John COLUMNIST fischer
some of their harvest. This, in turn, would result in a higher buying price for corn, milo and other farm products through scarcity and the effects of supply and demand.
- THERE ARE many appliances and machines in America that currently run on gas that would have to be converted to electric power. The energy in the years to come, as is predicted
This would mean a tremendous cost in converting these appliances and machines, such as gas dryers, hot water heaters, gas boilers, electric heaters, dishwasher, they would not have to be retrofitted.
Already there is a delivery system for methane, the natural gas pipelines that cross the country. There are about 50,000 underground of mineral nature gas pipelines
that serve 45 million people. Treendous savings would ensue from use of this system.
- AN UNLIMITED supply of methane and is an important fact, garbage, trash and is a key component of any try and vegetation and organic matter also can be used without causing environmental harm.
- Power plants that use this fuel are more efficient of build and less technical than conventional power plants, due to the construction cost of a natural gas plant is about one-third the cost of a nuclear power plant, and can be made with solar energy.
- THE PRICE of manure, garbage and other resources involved in the production of energy are generally, like oil and oil prices have. This in turn may help stabilize our sarging economy because many economists think our energy problems are a result of rising energy costs.
- NO OTHER countries control methane, so the United States would not have to submit to the demands of other countries and could remain free from foreign intervention. This is probably one of the most important behind the further development of methane because the United States once again can regain its international prominence.
These are some of the facts behind methane. Their implications are tremendous and sometimes overwhelming.
Methane is a source of energy that is a major contributor to climate change in environmental impact. Through continued research and experimentation, producing this fuel could be made more economical, cost-effective and environmentally friendly.
Methane and other forms of energy from organic matter are considered as solutions to our future energy problems. The are just too important a part of our energy future to be ignored.
Fallout not over from atomic tests
The clicking of the Geiger counter as it was turned his way echewed through Walter Cooper's memory when a doctor diagnosed his illness this year.
And a vision of an almost-forgotten photograph—one of Cooper standing in an ash-covered crag in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1936. In the image, Cooper, like the last piece of a waxy努葉urushi
So when doctors declared Cooper's wobbly walk, chronic headaches and constant fatigue to a leukemia-like disease of his bone marrow, Cooper's friends and fellow employees at the Topka Veterans hospital urged him to file a disability claim.
THERE WAS no doubt that the 54-year VA rehabilitation instructor had been in Nagasaki within a week after the atomic bombing, and he was months afterwards. Nor were there questions about the testimony of a VA hospital official who had tested Cooper with a Geiger counter almost 25 years later, who found him to be emitting radiation.
Iynn COLUMNIST byczynski
And there is no uncertainty about the nature of Cooper's disease, which prevents his red blood cells from forming and killing them. Every day, shots every month for the rest of his life.
But Cooper's disability claim was denied by the VA. The denial came two weeks ago in standard VA language. Cooper's illness was not found to be service-connected.
"I HAVE NO idea what the cause of it was," Cooper said, his firm relaxed and his voice gentle. "I don't know if the reason had anything to do with it or not."
Cooper is not alone. As of August this year, 333 veterans had filed claims with the VA because they reasoned that radiation was harmful and from tests, had damaged their health.
All but eight of those claims have been denied. Of those eight, all were granted to men who had leukemia or some other type of cancer.
The VA is not being stingy or trying to swindle veterans out of money due to them. The agency is simply responding to precedent: the effects of low-level violence are one in which no one before has really questioned the policy of assuming innocence until proven guilty.
BUT NOW that the time lag on cancer-
guinea pigs given of atomic radiation are
returning to the laboratories, demanding
to be examined and then paid for their
The government is responding. The Defense Nuclear Agency, for example, has established a hottie (800-368-308) in an attempt to contact the 250,000 military people who were present at atomic bomb sites, Nevada and Arizona from 1945 to 1982.
So far, about 30,000 have responded. Ten percent have reported having cancer.
Even more disturbing than the pug on military personnel, invulnishing victims though they are, is the fate of the civilian residents of nuclear test areas.
THOSE PEOPLE, unlike veterans,
need no medical assistance and have
no chance-not even eight out 33—of
receiving financial compensation
To right that wrong Sen. Orrinn Hatch, R-Uttah, is drafting legislation that would pay victims of atomic testing, while using them for a medical study.
The cost of compensation could run as high as $1 billion, Hatch estimated. But he said the need for some glimmer into the barn we may be doing ourselves by use of low-level radiation in nuclear power plants and medicine. For the sake of medical knowledge, it
But for people like Walter Cooper, just now feeling the real fallout of nuclear weaponry, compensation will be small consolation.
History books fail to tell real story
By BALLARD CAMPBELL N.V. Times Special Features
BOSTON-Each school of "updated," "revised" college-level American history textbooks delivers more of the same irrelevant political history. In their race to capture the classroom market, publishers embrace a political past and render it superficial.
sitize students to the fundamental questions of a discipline. Texts should synthesize a field's essential knowledge and dissect its challenges, in turn, in the history, the criteria dictate a review of what government did, qualitatively and quantitatively, and the discussion of the evolution of government as a process is as central to government as its product, the context of policy-making deserves analysis. Thoughtful pedagogy should be structured around that shaped historic patterns of governance.
Some may see these questions as political science's property, but a dispute over jurisdiction is counterproductive: Property, and traditionally, historians have claimed even all dimensions of past politics. They must recognize the captive audience. Hence, we must acknowledge their influence in shaping impressions about our political heritage.
Texts are functionally the authorized version of our political past.
A VAST chasm exists between what texts should and do deliver.
Their political sections concentrate on episode, not governance. After summer, they tend to be less likely to usually resume the political story with George Washington, and reach Jimmy Carter. They also often offer a sift, gliding condensation of nationally focused events,曼滩 presidential candidates.
Preoccupation with Washington is a new-media image falsely retrojected. Federalism, not the presidency or executive branch of government, are arch of our political system. Since their formation, the states existed as partners with the national government. States and their local subdivisions enacted and addressed the state's public policy for most of our history.
These governments had the primary responsibility over most domestic functions. Local government collected and spent most public funds until comparatively recent. State legislatures, the 18th century's legislative bodies, and the formulated these policies, but textbook publishers do not complete students' lives with this fact. In consequence, the rich and
persistent diversity of our policy is editorially neutered.
IN CREATING a centralized polite in place of the real decentralized one,诗 fashion a political world that never existed: it is more democratic and politic—formerly more, now less. This pervasive centralism and the excessive presidential periodization strip texts of a baseline with which to compare the large-format information of 20th-century government.
Few texts present an integrated overview of governmental management policy, which is manifestly the central feature of contemporary governmental action. The actions in such instances are traced over a period of time, while analysis of the impact of governmental action falls outside of this scope.
Historians are partly at fault for these irrelevances. The narrative presidential syndrome has its own history, historiographically speaking. But
What we are left with all too often, for example, is the squabble between Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft over the 1912 nomination, or Warren G. Harding's philanthropic孜讲 of discussion of the tax law and the rise of administrative rule-making.
publishers bear the greatest responsibility. Texts are big money-makers. Since the old formula sells, wtter tamper with success?
Texts teach young adults about a political past that has little intellectual bearing on the political world. Texts are ironic! History teaches us that we have as much at stake now as ever in understanding current politics.
Ballard Campbell teaches Americas history at Northeastern University.
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