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Thursday, October 30, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
FRONT COVER
Opinions
Pari-mutuel wagering will benefit state
Kansans should have the option of a day at the races without having to cross a state line.
No, pari-mutuel betting will not be the panacea to all the state's ills. Neither, however, will it be the destructive force that will demoralize the people of Kansas, as some opponents of the bill claim.
What pari-mutuel betting will do is bring much-needed industry to the state.
The state government will reap the rewards of the 3 percent to 6 percent tax on wagering money that will be pumped back into state-sponsored programs.
If passed, the amendment will allow the Kansas Legislature to regulate, license and tax horse and dog racing and pari-mutuel wagering on the events. The Legislature must pass legislation to set up the regulations for the industry, and tentative legislation was drawn up during this year's session.
And if pari-mutuel wagering passes, it still must pass by a majority in the county for it to be legal there. A county also could vote to allow pari-mutuel wagering in the county in a later election.
The Legislature must not overlook the necessity of added law enforcement to eliminate the undesireable elements of bookmakers, loan sharks and organized crime that orbit the arena of legalized betting.
An overriding advantage of bringing the racing industry to Kansas is jobs. Any racetrack needs people to work the concession stands and maintenance Hotels and restaurants, which will need staffs to run them, will surely spring up around the tracks to service the increased tourism. The desperate farm industry will be aided by the increased need for animal feed.
According to a poll by the Kansas City Times and CBS television affiliates in Kansas City and Topeka, 64.8 percent of the 412 registered voters surveyed last month said they favored pari-mutuel wagering. Opposed were 31.8 percent, and 2.2 percent were undecided.
In 1985, Nebraska raked in more than $9,700,000 in state taxes from parimutuel wagering.
To vote against a measure that could bring even the possibility of such revenue to this economically burdened state is shortsighted and irresponsible.
Cast a vote for local recreation center
On a ballot packed with confusing and often esoteric issues, it may be easy for voters to ignore the $1 million city bond issue in the Nov. 4 election.
But they shouldn't
The bond question asks whether the city of Lawrence should issue general obligation bonds to help construct a community recreation center at Holcom Park.
As a conscientious member of this community, your answer should be yes.
Plans for the recreational center include a full-size gymnasium, racquetball court, weight room and three multipurpose rooms for meetings
Fred DeVictor, the city's director of parks and recreation, said the project would cost about $1.3 million, even though the bond issue asks for only $1 million. The difference has been raised through private enterprise by the Holcom Recreational Center Foundation, a group of Lawrence residents.
DeVictor said the general obligation bond would cost a homeowner with a house valued at $50,000 about $3.50 annually for 10 years. That's a pretty cheap membership to a fine physical-fitness club.
In addition, plans for the center call for it to be entirely barrier-free, making the services readily accessible to the handicapped.
Everyone seems concerned these days about the adolescents of Lawrence not having anything to do or anywhere to go. The Holcom center would provide another outlet for their energy. KU students also would have another recreational facility available for their use.
All the way around, the Holcom center presents a valuable addition to the city of Lawrence and it will only happen if you vote "yes" on the bond issue.
Board of Education must keep authority
The Board of Education is best suited for the job.
Kansas voters will have the opportunity to resolve a 20-year tug-of-war between the state Legislature and the state Board of Education when they go to the polls on Tuesday. It's a question of ultimate authority — which body will have the power to make final decisions on matters of educational policy?
An amendment to the state constitution created the board in 1967. A subsequent decision by the Kansas Supreme Court said the amendment gave the board self-executing powers. This meant that the board could implement its policies without legislative approval.
The Kansas Board of Education is a 10-member panel that makes policy for
The question boils down to which body has more expertise in educational matters and which has more time and ability to focus on education. The answer to both is obviously the board. While the Legislature has diverse concerns, the board has a one-track agenda.
Even with an autonomous board, the Legislature will still have considerable input into education through its control of the budgets of both the board and the state. The Board of Education is competent enough to do its job without the Legislature imposing an additional bureaucratic obstacle.
schools from the kindergarten to the junior college levels. It rules on such issues as accreditation of schools and certification of teachers.
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David Silverman ... Editorial editor
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**Letters** should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words and should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position.
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The University Daily Kansan (USPS 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stairwater Flint Hall, Lawn, Kan. 60045, daily during the regular school year, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods, and on Wednesday during the summer session. Second-class students pay $75 for six months or $27 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months and $35 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 and are paid through the student activity fee.
Endorsements
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118
Straufer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66045.
The Kansan Editorial Board met and voted on candidate and issue endorsements. These endorsements will appear on the editorial page for the rest of this week.
On the issue of capital punishment, the board reached an evenly split vote. Consequently, endorsements may mention the candidates' stand on capital punishment when it is applicable, but the issue was not a determining factor in any Kansan endorsement.
It's rare that one politician will sue another for something that's been said about him.
Robertson goes off to battle
That's because name-calling is part of our political tradition. In any campaign, one candidate will routinely accuse another of everything from misfeasance, malfaessance and nonfeasence, to
Mike Royko Chicago
mopery, wife beating and high treason.
Some sensitive souls are offended and refer to it as "mudslung."
But I like to think of it as "truth-slinging," an essential part of the civic educational process. How else are we to get to know these people?
Apparently the Rev. Pat Robertson, who is thinking of running for president, falls into the sensitive category.
He has just filed a $70 million lawsuit against a present congressman and a former congressman for spreading a nasty story about
The story concerns Robertson's military exploits during the Korean War, when he was a young Marine lieutenant.
In one of life's strange coincidences, Robertson was once on a troopship that was headed for Korea, where hordes of Chinese and North Korean soldiers were waiting to shoot at him. On the same troopship was another young Marine lieutenant named Paul McCloskey Jr.
Years later, Robertson would become a famous TV preacher and McCloskey would become a well-known congressman from California.
When Robertson recently announced ed that he might want to run for
president, McCloskey thought back to those days on the Korea-bound troopship.
He remembered young Robertson. In fact, he says he remembered Robertson saying he was going to phone his daddy and have his daddy use political clout to keep him out of harm's way.
His daddy, A. Willis Robertson, happened to be a United States senator from Virginia.
McCloskey also says he remembered that Robertson didn't make it to Korea with the others in that combat unit. Instead, Robertson got off the ship in Japan, while the others chugged on to combat duty.
McCloskey, who is now in private practice, recently wrote about his memories to Rep. Andrew Jacobs who sorts of passed the word around.
Before long, the story got into the newspapers, and Robertson was very upset.
He denied that his daddy had pulled Pentagon strings to get him deterued to Japan, although he did concede that he got off the ship.
But neither McCloskey nor Jacobs, both of whom wounded and decorated in Korea, sound concerned about the lawsuit. They say that after the troopship story became public, other men who were young lieutenants on that voyage have come forward to confirm their version.
If anything, McCloskey, now in private law practice, sounds like he might enjoy putting Robertson on the stand and cross-examining him about standing on the dock in Japan and waving farewell to his buddies.
And he denied another of McCloskey's recollections that when he later did get to Korea, he served as a liquor officer. That meant he would regularly fly to Japan to bring back 'booch for the officer's club.'
I don't know why the story bothered Robertson. As I said in an earlier column, if he did manage to avoid combat duty, it just showed that he was ahead of the times.
Many of his fellow conservatives — including some in the White House — came of age during the Vietnam War and used various dodges to stay out of the service. Why not? If they had gone to Vietnam and been killed by communists, they wouldn't be around today to talk tough to the communists. Life is a series of trade-offs.
And there is nothing wrong with
having been a liquor officer, if that's what Robertson was. When I was in Korea, the liquor officer was far more popular than the chaplain.
But Robertson is angry. He says that because McCloskey and Jacobs are librarians, they're trying to make him look ridiculous, that their story is calculated to portray him as some sort of a conservative war wimp, part of that breed of public officials who now talk tough: to the commies but found a safe haven when the bullets were flying.
And so he has filed his lawsuit, demanding $35 million and an apology from each of them. I don't know what he wants more — the money or the apology. If it were me, he'd dough and let them call me a twit.
He might get the chance. Robertson sounds determined to go ahead with the lawsuit. As he put it:
"It is important that I demonstrate the falsehoods of these stories. Otherwise, if I am elected president, how could I, as commander in chief, ever order a young American into combat if the record is not absolutely clear that I never shirked military duty?"
Oh, that wouldn't be any problem. Pat. If a former Hollywood film command can send in the troops, I'm sure a former liquor officer can too.
I'll even drink to that.
It has been some time since the United States and the Soviet Union have concluded one of those agreements with which so many in the West have a love affair—arms control agreements. For some individuals, arms control is the central issue of our time.
Rationality vs. arms control
Columnist
Michael E. Chapman
As an example, George McGovern, the successor to Neville Chamberlain as the Prince of Appeasement, was at KU recently and gave his "critique" of the Reagan administration's record on foreign policy and arms control. To hear McGovern and his disciples talk, it would appear that the blame for all lack of progress in arms control can be placed at the White House doorstep.
Lest he forget, McGovern received a substantial public critique of his political ideas in his 1972 landside presidential defeat.
rus fervent desire for arms control is not unique to the private sector. The Capitation Department (also known as the State Department) has been frothing at the mouth to obtain an arms control agreement with the Soviets. Even President Reagan seems intent on putting his name on some type of arms treaty.
A brief examination of the
Arms control implies reciprocity and requires the bargaining parties to abide by the agreement's terms after it is signed. Anything less would make the treaty a worstless scrap of paper and lend credence to the argument that discussing arms control with totalitarians is, in essence, an exercise in futility.
history of Soviet adherence to arms control agreements should leave only the politically retarded without feelings of skepticism toward the arms control "process."
The Soviet Union violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty by constructing a large phased array missile detection and tracking station at Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia.
And despite their public proclamations of adherence to SALT II, the Soviets have violated its terms by testing and developing more than one intercontinental ballistic missile system.
They are also violating a 1972 chemical warfare treaty by maintaining an offensive biological warfare program and using it in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia
The United States maintains that the Soviets are violating arms control agreements in at least ten other areas.
These are the fruits of detente.
These are the fruits of defense. Sadly, arms control zealots in the West view these violations as a fails accomplis and feel that any agreement is better than none. As a result, the United States has unique pressure applied to it to obtain an agreement at the earliest possible moment. This pressure is unique because there is no arms control lobby in the Soviet Union and public opinion is nonexistent.
Pressure to reach an arms agreement led to the recent outcry against the president's refusal to kill his Strategic Defense Initiative in return kjeykavin for large reductions in strategic and intermediate-range nuclear weapons. Reagan's commitment to SDI was blamed for the lack of a "historic achievement" at the summit.
metamorphosis has taken place in the Kremlin and that strict adherence to agreements is now the order of business for the Gorbache regime?
In light of the Soviets' record, have we any evidence that a
The underlying assumption of arms contol zealots is that arms create tension. But, in fact, it is tension that creates arms. Tension such as the invasion and seventy-year occupation of Afghanistan. Perhaps Reagan should propose to place limits on SDI in return for an unconditional withdrawal of the 115,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
Imagine the Soviet's response to such a suggestion. It would be portrayed as an anti-Soviet campaign. They would condemn it, saying it would not lead to a "positive" atic in hindering "serious" negotiations.
Linkage is not a welcome concept in the Kremlin.
This is not to say that all arms control efforts should be abandoned. It would be quite nice to have an agreement with the Soviet Union that would enchance the security of both sides. Especially if they would set a precedent and actually abide by its terms.
Until then, the "arms control process" should be approached by the United States with caution and skepticism. The history of arms control demonstrates that arms have been controlled only in the West.
The president should retain his options regarding SDI since the Soviet Union continues to rapidly expand its own efforts in the field of space-based defense systems. The Soviets do not wish to kill SDI for fear of another arms race. It petrifies them because it has the potential to turn the giant Soviet military machine into a pile of junk. That may or may not be true, but it is a promising thought.