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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, October 15, 1982
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President's game risky
President Reagan apparently thought an appearance on national television Wednesday could reassure the nation that economic prosperity is just — well, not quite — around the corner.
He was mistaken
Although CBS, NBC and CNN may not have recognized it, the speech was pure political maneuvering. And the next time Reagan warns Democrats not to "politicize" the economic situation, he should recognize the individual who placed the economy in the arena to begin with — Ronald Reagan.
Reagan has declared that the November off-year elections will be a referendum on his policies and make "a clear choice about the kind of nation we will be — whether we will continue our sure and steady course to put America back on the track, or whether we will slide backward into another economic binge."
In his speech Wednesday, Reagan said he wanted to help people "desperately trying to make sense out of all the statistics, slogans and political jargon filling the airwaves in this election
year." Given the medium of the speech, this is especially ironic.
It has been Reagan who has piled the numbers. He predicts a budget deficit of $42.5 billion that balloons to more than twice as much and results in the first federal deficit of more than $100 billion. He claims responsibility for a rise in unemployment of 2.7 percent to 10.1 percent, even though simple calculations show that, assuming a 4 percent rate under "full employment" conditions, the true increase during his administration is about 80 percent.
It is even more ironic that the one man in Reagan's administration who gave the American people a candid account of the nation's economic plight
David Stockman — is rumored to be leaving the White House after the fall elections. Stockman called the deluge of statistics "political numbers," and told a writer for the Atlantic Monthly that "none of us really understands what's going on with these numbers."
New set of judges no answer to Supreme Court overload
Stockman was taken to the "woodshed" by Reagan and has kept a low profile since. It's a sorry thing to see someone punished for being honest — and right.
By JOHN G. KESTER
New York Times Syndicate
WASHINGTON — There is no apparent reason why good judges can't be good managers. But Justice John Paul Stevens seems to think otherwise, and he has produced a very bad idea,
Justice Stevens complains that there are too many petitions for review to the U.S. Supreme Court and that it grants too many of them. His solution? Set up another federal court. This new set of judges would decide which cases the Supreme Court has to handle. The same is not to be trusted with this task and are too busy anyway for this "less important work."
His idea has three flaws. First, he exaggerates the work load. The number of regular petitions has indeed inched up (2,513 last year, 1,828 a decade ago). But cases awarded the full treatment — briefs, argument, written opinions — have increased very little: 132 court opinions in 1963, 164 in 1972, 166 last term — or 18 per case — and the nine months that the court sat last term.
Pettitions for review do not take much time. A practiced eye can dispose of at least a third of them with a five-minute scanning of each. If a lawyer can't explain in a few pages why his case should be heard, probably either the issue or the lawyer is too muddled, anyway.
It is an open secret that six of them (not including Justice Stevens) now rely on one clerk to summarize a petition for all six. This invitation to group-think relies too much on one 25-year-old — especially when four votes are enough to grant court review.
Paradoxically, justices might save time if they followed the example of Justice William J. Brennan, who scans most petitions himself, faster than a clerk can summarize them. The other justices, however, have been moving in the onoise direction.
Second, the work load is partly self-created. Besides the burgeoning number of laws Congress enacts, many court decisions needlessly encourage lawsuits. The court also dissipates effort by issuing dozens of separate personal records which more often omit than illuminate.
Such busywork is encouraged by the new managerial style. Justice Louis D. Brandeis once commented that the court was respected because "we do our own work here." That is not so true anymore. Twenty years ago, each justice had two clerks and a secretary; now, most justices (except Justice Stevens) manage law factories staffed with four clerks.
Extra ghost writers encourage verbosity.
Opinions filled 2,284 pages in the 1960 term, 2,881 in 1970, 4,350 last term — with little increase in the number of cases decided. Lately, the court resembles less the Brandie model than just another administrative agency.
Third, the Stevens proposal would address an administrative problem by creating more bureaucracy. This approach wouldn't be merely wasteful; it would also be dangerous.
First-year law students learn that the law is shaped less by the answers judges give than by the questions they ask. A Supreme Court judge would say by someone else would no longer be supreme.
Justice Stevens despairs because the court cannot restrain its appetite for righting wrongs. Like Ulysses, it must be tied to the mast to resist certain settlements from lawyers who lost their cases below.
But would the Stevens solution help?
Filling someone else's docket is like spending someone else's money. The justices now at least know that they are the ones who will have to decide any cases they agree to hear. A new court would feel no such constraint. Inevitably, it would grant more petitions, not fewer.
Also, a new court would develop its own agenda. The fact is that the Supreme Court chooses to review most decisions it does not like. Of the cases it hears, 80 percent get reversed. Justices often select for review cases with facts that lend themselves to a particular legal result they favor. Power to predesignate the likely reversals sets the court's direction. Justice Stevens would give that power to a group of strangers.
Furthermore, petitions reveal to the justices what issues are percolating in the lower courts, how faithfully its own rulings are being heeded, which federal judges are reliable and which are sloppy or biased. The grubby panorama the petitions disclose keeps the court in touch with the real world and in charge of the federal judiciary.
Finally, there is the bar. Since 1799, it has loved to litigation technicals about jurisdiction. A new court would provide enough of those to assure dozens of lawyers a comfortable living.
Justice Stevens is an able thinker, but in this instance he is pedaling a casual fix for the wrong problem. Adding complexity to an already overly complex legal system is not the way to administer of justice efficient. If the law is out of control, creating more courts is not the answer.
The University Daily KANSAN
John G. Kester, a lawyer, was law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black.
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BRAIN BARCLING 1982
No job — time for nasty letters
BJ Johnson isn't your usual former college student who is still out of work.
No sir. Five months after graduating, no job in sight, Bif goes out and does something about it. He writes letters. Nasty letters. Nasty letters like this one:
Dear Reagan:
What the hell is going on? We put you into office; and the next thing we know there are enough unemployed workers, failing business, not paying their taxes to make Howover look like a benevolent cruel
Yea, sure. What did you say after the new unemployment figures were released? "I'll take the blame for the increase if the job numbers improve for the rest of it," or something to that effect.
that, it's rich. And if I go run down little children in my used car, they can put the child in a bucket.
And listen to some of your advice. Look in the wants ad, huff.* Have you looked in the wants lately? If you have six years experience and are a good student, you'll find Dynamics, well, sure there are plenty of jobs.
Do you know what I had to do last week? You've heard of McDonald's, I'm sure. Well after my 67th job interview with a company, I decided what the hell, you know, I might as well just be in a 30.5 km hour. The only problem is I get beat up by a guy with a Ph.D. Cruel world, hub?
Okay, so where that's great economy you promised? Trickling down, I suppose. Well I haven't got that long to wait, see. I've got some things like student loans to pay back. I'd like to
eat, and maybe have a place with some heat in it before winter sees in.
So try and get on the ball up there. "Don't too far off, and maybe we'll get lucky and you'll be like your favorite president, Calvin Colidge, and decide not to run again.
Sincerely your
Rif. Johnson
Soon after Bif made this letter, he went on his 8th job interview. No dice again. He went
I've already warned Reagan, and now if your turn: Get on the ball or else!
about everything I own to keep warm. Let's see; there were the two textbooks I never said back, my bean bag chair and my Garfield doll. And it's not even November vet.
TOM GRESS
home and fired off another letter, this time to a different member of the administration.
Dear Volker
Bif Johnson
I see you on television, in your nifty Brooks Brothers suit and Ivy League tie, saying that interest rates will stay high until inflation comes down, or maybe until the bankers make enough money to send their kids to Europe for a few years.
Do you know what you are doing to me?
I try to go out and get a job, and the company says it not hiring because the interest rates are high.
I want to save money. I need money. Look, I can't eat rejection slips, got that?
Okay, okay, so you are bringing them down a little bit, to help bring us out of the recession. But could you hurry it up. I've burned just
Finally Bif, exaggerated, still out of work,
still looking, almost at the end of his rope die-
dle, with a face full of doubt.
Dear Weinberger:
Don't you have enough planes, bombs and missiles? I don't want to start anything, but it seems like the only businesses making any difference are country the Pentagon and its contractors.
I swear, if you found out we were behind the Russians in jock straps, you'd have some senator hold up a jock strap on the floor of the Senate and call it our window of vulnerability. Next thing, we devote 94 percent of the Russian space to hacking and better jock straps than the Russians have.
See, you guys are ruining the economy. The Russians are going to take us over? They can't even beat up a bunch of guys running around in tumics in Afghanistan, or get a submarine out of Sweden. Hell, their leadership looks like the patients at the rest home my grandmother is
So quit taking everybody else's money, like a greedy kid with his baseball card collection.
Sincerely yours,
Bif Johnson
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
Abuses of U.S. flag reflect misplaced value
How would a United States citizen feel when witnessing the desecration of our nation's flag? Well, if he were I, he would experience great indignation and a pain in his heart.
Sunday, I experienced this indignation the last time that I care to. As I was running past Strong Hall at 5:30 that evening, I observed a University employee in the final process of lowering our nation's flag. Not only did the flag touch the ground twice, but the employee began to fold the flag in a hapachard and disrespectful manner, almost waddling it.
I crossed the street from Wescow and asked the man whether I could help him flag the flag properly. To this he mumbled something about being in a hurry. Upon further inquiry, I found that he was anxious to watch a baseball game on television. I then asked him which was more important — the flag and what it stood for or a baseball game. The man obviously has misplaced values, as he replied, "Hey man, the game."
This is not an attitude held solely by that employee. Rather, it is an attitude taken by many people, as I have witnessed such carelessness in the needs need immediate and permanent correction.
Again I ask, where has our pride gone when a man can say that he cares more about a game than a sport?
Call me over patriotic, but in my book there is no such thing. Actions such as these are not trivial abuses, but rather blantat disgreaches to the principles for which our nation's citizens have fought and died. Let us not misplace our priorities.
Michael S. Werner Russell junior
To the Editor:
After reading a letter written by Carl Thor of Lawrence in the Oct. 12 Kansas City Times, I realized why I found myself without sympathy and proposals for a nuclear weapon freeze.
Fear, freeze linked
Thor, in chastising the press for being too numb to "the exposed nerve of nuclear
nightmare," expressed this sentiment: "The facts are so grotesque, and the mere consideration brings up such intense feelings of rage, grief and hopelessness. . .."
These are the words that I think expose the cause of the movement. To me, the peace movement is not founded on principles of humanitarian need, but on personal fear.
This is why the president distrusts the movement, because the fears harbored in the peace movement serve to weaken the United States if they are exploited. I believe it is right to seek peace in the world, but it is not right to freeze in world insecurity.
Paul Longabach
Leavenworth sophomore
Cartoons insult Arafat
To the Editor:
Ever since the Beirut massacre and the mass murders of the Palestinians, an enormous quantity of insulting cartoons have appeared in the Kagan. Why is that?
I cannot understand how some of us Americans are viewing the outside world. I do not think
it is funny. We should sympatize with this man who has been literally tricked. He was asked to leave Lebanon and was promised that the Palestinians left behind would be safe and sound. But, alas! Once he left, his people were brutally killed for no good reason.
Do you think he will sit down, smile and be happy, or what?
I would not be surprised if he gathered his forces to retaliate. And if he did that, I would be on his side and not on that of the Israelis, who I formerly thought were more humane.
And yet what surprises me is that instead of us sympathizing with him, the Kansan's has managed to publish some of the most insisting books in his life, a fool out of him. And why? I really don't know.
I do wish we Americans could be a bit more sensitive to the people around us. What would we have felt if we were treated like the Palestinians?
Arafat is a respectable man, not just present to the people to make him of fun, so these caricatures are very funny.
Ann Marie Peterson Lawrence freshman
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters.
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