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7A
MONDAY NOVEMBER 3,2008
OPINION
Why maintaining the T is moral issue
On weekday afternoons, Robert Berryhill can be seen at the corner of Massachusetts and Ninth streets waiting to board the No. 6 bus of Lawrence's bus system, commonly known as the T. Berryhill lives close to the bus stop at Sixth and Kasold streets and has to make his way to and from Haskell University, located across town from where he lives, where he has worked in food service for 14 years.
Berryhill used to have a car, but it broke down the day KU made it to the Final Four. Because Berryhill didn't afford to fix his car, he had to find an alternative.
"If they hadn't made that bus system, I would've been in a world of hurt," Berryhill said.
Now he and his daughters take the T everywhere. His only complaint is that it doesn't run on Sundays and later at night. But he can live with it, especially since he discovered the joy of meeting new people in the bus.
And he has met plenty of others just like him; people who rely on the T to get to their jobs and who need it to live normal and dignified lives.
According to a 2007 ridership survey, 46 percent of the riders said they had a household that made less than $15,000 per year. Seventy percent had an income below $25,000.
Many cannot afford to drive, and they need their jobs.
But soon they might not be able to rely on the T. The city is putting to vote on Nov. 4, propositions 2 and 3, which would increase the sales tax by a quarter of a percent in order to maintain the T. That is a quarter of a cent for every dollar you spend.
It is doubtful the T will survive if those propositions are not approved.
What happens to people like Berryhill if the propositions don't pass? What alternatives do they have? Finding another job they can get isn't easy, especially in these hard economic times.
It's time for all of those who oppose supporting the T to realize it too.
Berryhill is honest. He said before his car broke down, he didn't care about the T at all. But once he didn't have an alternative, he realized the importance of the service.
Opponents of the propositions argue that they shouldn't have to pay taxes for a service they won't use. But if the government collects taxes to maintain roads, shouldn't it at least provide the means for underprivileged people to use these roads?
Not doing so constitutes the de facto segregation of those who cannot drive an automobile because they are unable to benefit from a service that the government provides for others.
At its root, maintaining the T is not a financial question but a moral question. People who take the T include senior citizens, people with disabilities, kids who haven't yet reached the driving age and those who can't afford a car. These are people who also require some form of transportation to get to their jobs, to meet their friends at the park, to go to the movies — in essence, to live.
That is why the T should be supported. It prevents a considerable segment of the population
— people like Berryhill — from becoming marginalized. So, on Nov. 4, put yourself in the shoes of those who cannot afford an automobile.
Oliveira is a Belo Horizonte, Brazil, senior in journalism, history and peace and conflict studies. He is the associate opinion editor.
Then cast your vote.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Why students shouldn't vote for Obama Nov. 4
The board wrote that "Obama is also aware that spending can be helpful in stimulating the economy." By taxing more?
Let's start where the editorial board did: with the economy. Tax cuts didn't just for the wealthy. They are there for any one who pays taxes. The size of the tax cuts are based off the amount of taxes paid. If one pays no taxes, then that person gets no tax cuts.
Next, there is foreign policy. First of all, Obama has no experience in foreign policy, at all. McCain also wants the war in Iraq to end soon, but he knows, from experience, that if we leave before it's over we will be back. Finally, of course Obama wants a return to diplomacy, considering, once one looks past the hollow promises, charisma is all he has to offer.
Then comes the environment. "Obama wants to invest $150 billion during 10 years to jump start research into alternative energy," Spend $150 billion of whose money? Oil is still the cheapest energy source available. Other energy
sources need development, but that won't happen over night. "Obama finally gave into offshore drilling this summer when gas prices reached $4 a gallon." Obama is already breaking his promises.
And then there was one: healthcare. "He (Nader) wants to provide universal healthcare and pay for it with a flat tax (more taxes)." Universal health care lowers the medical standards of doctors. The University's healthcare system is a failing example of universal healthcare. Yes, it is free, but the lines are huge, the doctors are incompetent, and the equipment is second hand. "Obama wants the poor to receive care but has been less than explicit about where it will come from." Risina taxes again.
Obama is the poster child for tax-and-spend Democrats. He will raise taxes for universal healthcare, the environment and for "boosting" the economy (oxymoron).
Let's not elect a leader based on popularity, race or charisma, but instead on history, knowledge and realistic ideas.
Michael Bull is a sophomore from Wichita.
THE UNIVERSITY HADY KANSAN
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FROM THE DRAWING BOARD
TYLER DOEHRING
Forget ObamcCain: Meet a true leader
Like you, I used to be in favor of major party Candidate X, whose ability to wear a suit and smile vacantly far surpassed the vacant smiling and suit wearing of major party Candidate Y.
I felt a thrill up my leg, Sure,
some pundits point out that the
But deep down inside, I weared for more, a candidate who would look me in the eyes and, forthrightly, lie to me. A candidate who would, while holding a handkerchief over his mouth in reulsion, refuse to shake my hand because of "the thousands of tiny, many-limbed creatures dwelling upon it." A candidate willing to slap a baby.
In short, a candidate repelled by the very thought of humanity.
Disillusioned by fake camaraderie, disenfranchised by schmaltzy compassion, I've never had a candidate.
But then I saw Zagnorth's stump speech. He delivered it to aid workers in some hurricane-shattered gulf town with amazing grace and delivery, with inspiration, with a booming, mechanical voice that echoed over the whole town:
"I shall rule you all."
hurricane itself was probably caused by the touching down of Zagnorth's island-sized, arachnoid spacecraft. Whatever.
Reactionary Washington insiders will always be afraid of hope and change when it is expressed by towering, exoskeletoned warlords from the Xanthid Nebula.
I'm once again proud to be an American. I've been inspired to community organize.
Oh, sure, our methods have been updated to include text messaging, blogging, laser whips and mind control tiaras. But you can bet this is exactly how of Abe Lincoln would be campaigning today, were he both alive and a silicon-based organism trying to harvest our species for its genetic material.
I am Zagnorth the Conqueror, and I approve this message. Paid for by the committee to elect Zagnorth president, Ron Paul vice president.
Zagnorth the Conqueror for president: "Brainwashing you can believe in."
But it's not just that I'm inspired by Zagnorth. It's also about his substantive policies, about moving America in the right direction with the right ideas. His fresh and innovative, outside-the-beltway, ideas on enslaving humanity to construct a weapon of unimaginable destructive power: "Country First ... and then the world."
Sarah Palin has five children and was considered brave in deciding to keep a child prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. Zagnorth has 3.6 million broodlings, roughly 24 percent of which have some sort of genetic anomaly or additional score of insectoid eyes. He has bravely eaten them all.
ObamcCain are just more of the same. They both have lengthy healthcare proposals that are hard to understand and boring to read. Zagnorth's healthcare plan, reads in its entirety, "Incineration."
Obama has little experience at actually ruling. Zagorth has witnessed the birth and death of stars and can lift a Greyhound bus over his head with only six tentacles.
Zagnorth is far superior to weak humans. McCain is feeble and old after 71 Earth years. Zagnorth is depicted in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egyptian civilization and can lift a Greyhound bus over his head with only six tentacles.
Zagnorth has answers but do ObamicCain? Looking at these privileged Washington insiders, it seems doubtful that they've ever even talked to a real Joe the Plumber, much less met him in real life and strapped him screaming to a chair, pleading through pathetic sobs and snot-bubbles for his insignificant plumber life while his regular Joeness is forcibly extracted through his ear canal for future study.
Reichert is an Oberlin graduate student in law.
How the culture of fear relates to this election
DANTHOMPSON
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon spoke to a full crowd in the Kansas Union Ballroom last Monday.
Chabon built his literary career on genre-bending novels that draw on sci-fi, hard-boiled detective fiction and the graphic novel. His lecture crossed boundaries between literature, pop culture and politics. He appealed for decency and intelligence in American government, apropos of Democratic presidential nominee Obama, a message that struck a chord with the liberal university audience.
In his lecture, he lamented the corporate commodification of childhood imagination and the culture of fear that has kept so many kids out of the street and in front of the television.
Chabon
That same culture of fear, he argued, has infected our nation's political discourse and can be blamed for overprotective parenting that is keeping kids from realizing the essential imaginative freedom they once had.
Fear is manufactured by the corporate media to further their pernicious ends — usurping the sovereign territory of children's imagination and delivering instead a prefabricated experience of childhood in movies, on television and in hyper-colored plastic packaging on Wal-Mart shelves. The vital creativity of childhood is lost.
The other day, my dental assistant, while prodding my gum line with a metal spike, admitted to me that she feared Obama could be the antichrist.
Chabon highlighted an undeniable and malicious strain in our national zeitgeist, one that has become ever more apparent in this election, particularly in the rhetoric of Republican nominee John
McCain's flagging campaign. By portraying Obama as the unscrupulous Other. McCain and Sarah Palin appeal to the worst in our national character.
Seriously, I thought better of her. But there is a sinister commonality between these moronic rumors and the McCain campaign's rhetoric. Obama, is not all that he appears to be. He has a hidden agenda. Don't trust what he tells you.
Luckily, this appeal to fear doesn't seem to be working. Such a fixation of the ugly and untrusting side of human existence cannot sustain McCain as it has maintained the Bush administration for the past eight years.
McCain has occasionally taken the time to disown the most blatant untruths about Obama, but it is no mistake that his campaign of Rovian fear-mongering has rallied angry and xenophobic crowds.
Thompson is a Topeka senior in economics and political science.
To contribute to Free for All, call 785-864-0500.
I just saw a girl walking around campus with moon boots. Really? Give Napoleon Dynamite back his shoes.
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I love the fact that a vote for Obama in Lawrence just doesn't matter.
Halloween '09
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Hey, KU Parks and Rec,
why don't you clean up that
debris near Summerfield and
Naismith?
Listening to the "Truman Show" soundtrack on campus is freaky
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Help me, Free for All. I'm being attacked by ladybugs.
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Every time I see a girl wearing Ugg boots I think of reporting a Sasquatch sighting
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Why do people ask the question "Did you get my text?"
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Free for All, my roommate was put in you three times in one day, and I haven't been put in at all throughout the year. I was pissed.
Chapter 2: And so the greek said, "GDI, let my campus go."
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So basically the "loud and clear sound amplifier" is for listening to video games and eavesdropping on your neighbors.
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I kissed a Republican, and I liked it.
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How does a Safe Bus driver get a DUI? They are supposed to be safe.
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I love you but not long island iced teas.
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Props to whoever TPed the Pi Phi house this weekend.
That is the best TP job I have
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Man, I do love the non fratters.
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Man, I love that I hate my roommates. It makes home an adventure.
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Ladies, I'm back working at Watson
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I live in Lawrence now.
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Furby ate Tamagochi. That's what happened.