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University Daily Kansan
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Opinions on this page reflect the view of only the writer.
No time for politics
Gov. Robert Bennett began budget hearings this week for fiscal 1978. The governor was his usual cautious self, which is good and bad.
State agencies are requesting $1.9 billion from state funds, a 9.8 per cent increase over the fiscal 1977 budget. The requests would require that $125 million be spent from the state general funds, a 15 per cent increase from this fund.
THE GOOD statement the governor made was that he would cut the requests until they could be financed without an increase in general state taxes. Bennett said that the increase in spending from the general fund would be held to 5 per cent.
There are some areas that need help, such as prisons and the enforcement of health standards in nursing homes, but overall the state's needs aren't great. Also, the people have made it clear that they don't want to leave Bennett, is responding to their wishes.
The governor's statement seems reasonable and responsive. Kansas doesn't have great problems. Pollution and crime don't threaten the state much, and unemployment is still quite low. The state already has increased aid to poorer school districts to help insure an adequate education.
UNFORTUNATELY, Bennett used the occasion to attack Democrats and their proposals, which he would add $70 million to the state budget if apportioned; the remarks are unfortunate because they are partisan and misleading.
The budget hearings should be a time to put politics aside and truly try to
The governor was misleading by saying that the Democrats' proposals would increase spending $70 million. He also presumably taxed actual tax reforms, not new programs.
THE PROPOSALS Bennett referred to were raising the personal exemption on state income taxes, removing the sales tax on food and drugs, and increasing the homestead property tax exemption. Bennett estimated these proposals would reduce state revenue $68.5 million.
It is unfair for Democrats to make such proposals without saying where the money to replace this revenue would come from. But it is also unfair for Bennett to dismiss such proposals without even considering them.
These proposals aren't harmful tax loopholes. Rather, they would greatly help the poor and those on fixed incomes by increasing their buying power. And the revenue lost could be made up by raising the rates for some taxes. This wouldn't really be a tax increase—the people of the state would pay the same amount of money. It would just make the poor pay less of that total.
Bennett's conservatism is good in that he thinks twice before spending the state's money. It is bad in that he doesn't even think once about making taxes more equitable just because the proposals come from his opponents.
By Greg Hack
Contributing Writer
Whenever I read of world food shortages, rising food prices or the plight of American farmers plagued by faulty government policies and price-cost squeezes, I remember a terse reminder that several years ago on our ranch in western Kansas.
One day I took a cold beer to one of our middle-aged adults, and they were large, dusty wheat field. While he paused to drink his beer, I told him about the race rids in which Martin Luther King's death
Farmers deserve a break
"THEM CITY people have never cared about us and how well we get along and they never will," he said. "Let 'ern knock themselves out. I don't care."
That may have been an especially dim appraisal $ ^{c} $ the relationship of our country's population, but that farmhand has even more right to feel that way today. The United States' agricultural policies and attitudes have forced thousands of farmers to work in the last 20 years. Those that remain face an uncertain future.
Look at Douglas County's 870 farmers. Only 178 of them have been successful or lucky enough to work in the county time. According to Earl Van Meter, Douglas County extension agent, three-fourths of the farmers have either full- or part-time farm incomes. They work as janitors, factory workers and University employees. Their vacations, weekends and much of their time go to their small farms.
WHY DO they do it? It certainly isn't because they're getting a fair return on their investment of time and money.
Van Meter says county farmers need to get $3.06 a bushel for corn or wheat with a yield of at least 35 bushels an acre. This year's drought caused average yields to drop to 18 bushels to accept the weather as part of the age-old gamble of farming.
What is most frustrating to them is that the cost of running
John Fuller Contributing Writer
a farm has risen inoxerably while returns have diminished. Fuel and fertilizer prices have doubled or triple since 1972. Yet, if a farmer took his crop to the Douglas County Co-op to sell it he would get about $2.46 a bushel for his wheat or $2.46 for his corn.
Can you believe that in 1961 the price for wheat on Nov. 27 was $2.33 a "bushel"? It's true! Except for the landmark years of the big Russian wheat deal in 1973/74, when prices rose over the mark, the price of wheat had remained in the $1.90 to $3.00 range in the last quarter century.
LIVESTOCK breeders and dairymen are in similar straits. The annual $145 average maintenance cost of a beef cow is about $90, but about $140 today. It costs 45 cents to add a pound of beef to a feeder calf that will bring 37 cents a pound. Ten years ago the average cost for the Mid-America Dairy Producers Coop, a regional organization that represents dairymen and distributes their products, was about the cost-price squeeze of low milk prices and high operating costs.
To add insult to injury, the farmers and cattlemen and their families go to the same market. They swell their dwellers do and pay the same high prices for the products that they are paid so miserably for. Only in 1973 was the farmer's share equal to his urban counterpart.
there are 11,000 members. The rest were forced to quit.
The only way farmers have survived is by becoming more efficient and by tightening their belts. Each U.S. farmer feeds 400 acres of farmland, or about a per cent of the population to feed our country compared with 40 per cent or more in the developing countries. Yet, if given the proper price incentives, our farmers could reach 50 per cent without clearing additional lands.
SET ASIDE the problems of the American farmer for a moment and look at how his plight fits into the world view. A man cane, illogical and grossly insensitive the world's governments are in dealing with food policies and problems. Nearly half of the world's population is under the allowance to some degree.
There are seventy-six million extra mouths to feed each year, which require 28 million metric tons of additional grain to feed these mouths. As consumers fret about high prices (even though they spend
only 14 per cent of their income on food, compared with 20 to 70 per cent in the rest of the world) die every day of gyration
A hungry world will never have peace, and the situation can only get more potentially explosive as the population increases. We can be marked by the year 2000. Obviously there is a limit to how many people the earth can feed and support. But there could be enough food for all if the population began to stagnate in the mid-1980s. We certainly the capability to feed everyone now.
WHAT MUST be done? To begin with, the urban masses who carry such clout at the polls and in the media must be made aware of what they are carrying the cities on their backs any longer. Wry should they be asked to sacrifice when every time a city worker gets disassured he goes on strike? Or would he happen if farmers went on strike?
Other countries, such as Japan, ensure that farmers' incomes match those of city dwellers who realize they require a lot of agriculture. America should be able to do the same. If food prices go up, we'll just be joining the rest of the world. We must be sure that we don't have to wait in lines for meat or cheese.
Secondly, governmental economic polices should be
designed to ensure that farmers aren't at the mercy of a wildly fluctuating market situations and are better prepared, according to James A. McCain, Kansas secretary of labor, this might require some system of price supports or target prices and even direct subsidies for farmers developing countries. If America's farmers are to contribute to the solution of the world food problem, they must produce more and more. To do so they must be rewarded better.
OTHER COUNTRIES could help also. Even though grain is very cheap now, many nations that have complained bitterly for years about high prices and grain scarcity and that have lost a lot of their grain reserves, haven't taken advantage of the opportunity to buy. With the world crop situation looking fairly good this year, the have-not nations are content to let America and its farmers get the bill for storing it. This lack of storage space by the way, is now depressing prices even more.)
There is so much to be done.
It's sickening and absurd for people to be hungry when it's cold. That's what makes the start that shouldn't be too hard for the public to accept would be to give the farmer an even consider what's happening now, so it will得 worse if we don't.
1976 NYT SPECIAL FEATURES
Stock campaign story might save reporters
By JERRY SEIB Staff Writer
Campaign 76 has dragged on for what seems to be an eternity. This is distressing for the average American, who heve
But consider the poor political reporter. He has been filing stories on the presidential campaign since the first primary in New Hampshire—if not before.
By now, he's looking for a break. There's little new he can say, anyway. The two candidates give the same answers to questions, and a reporter's stories are rather predictable by now.
To make the reporter's job easier in these last days, it might be helpful for him to write a multiple choice campaign story. By circling the catch-all phrase that typifies a day's events, the reporter can tell us easily and pessibly听 us about the same as we've been hearing in recent weeks.
For example, the multiple choice campaign story might read:
President Gerald Ford yesterday:
a. lashed out at his Democratic opponent.
c. make absolutely no difference.
b. lose Ford the votes of the Poles, Czechs, blacks and Donny Osmond fans.
Observers think this development will:
b. called on Americans to unite behind him and Tony Orlando.
a. assure Ford of victory in November.
Ford sounded his traditional campaign themes and called Jimmy Carter: a. *a. ruthless, no-government* attitude, which will probably make George Meany secretary of defense.
b. "one of the worst singers I've ever seen . . . er, heard." c. "a guy who I've heard people talk about but who I haven't really thought much about."
Newsmen accompanying Ford;
a. said the day represented a new, tough stand for the President and probably meant Donny Osmond Poles and Donny Osmond fans.
c. fell asleep on the bus and missed the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter:
a. lashed out at his opponent.
b. softened his criticism.
c. granted an exclusive interview to Mad magazine.
It was a move designed to:
a. show he wouldn't back down
b. the verbal abuse that Tony Orlando has been dishing out.
c. "a lot like Mr.Klutz."
b. win the votes of Michigan football fans.
c. please Alfred E. Neumann.
Carter said Ford was;
b. "a nice guy with a sweet family."
a. "sinking to the lowes levels of lowness that have been suck in to quite some time, even if the water is a billion of sinking to low levels."
c. a lot like Mr. Klutz.
Newsmen accompanying
Carter:
a. made fun of Carter's smile.
b. played softball with some Secret Service agents while Carter spoke.
c. fell asleep and missed the whole thing.
Independent candidate Eugene McCarthy meanwhile said he;
a. hoped he could debate Ford, Carter and some former POWs.
b. wanted to visit some more college campuses.
c. demanded that his name be put on the Afghanistan ballot. Observers said voters:
a. shouldn't take the day's developments seriously.
b. would react by electing Pat Paulsen.
c. probably wouldn't really care.
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Networks squeezing local stations into pipelines
When the government raised the antitrust question vis-a-vis the television networks during the Nixon years, there was so much feeling the motive was political that the Federal Communications Commission couldn't nurture the matter.
Now it has been raised again by the Westinghouse Broadcasting Co., which is saying, "The networks dominate the
television industry. They exercise effective control over most of the time on affiliated stations; they influence overall advertising rates and practices; they absorb a disproportionate share of revenue and profit, and they have a major impact on economic conditions in the industry.
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 12, 2016. Subscriptions for June and July and at杰克星期六, Saturday and Holiday Monday, August 12, 2016. Subscrip-
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"The total effect of the action
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor
Johan Gung
Managing Editor
Edward J. Editor
Managing Editor
Stephen W.
Cameron Editor
Stephen W.
Cameron Editor
Business Manager Team Manager
Assistant Business Manager Carole Roosterkoehler
Associate Advertising Manager Jannelle Jaramey
Associate Marketing Manager
WITH FIVE major market TV stations (Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Baltimore), the three most important of the chains not owned by networks.
News Adviser Publisher Bob Giles David Dary
The company has a reputation in the industry as a schlock outfit of no distinction, but it does not interfere with the networks—one or another of its stations are affiliated with all three of them don't arise out of anguish over the poor quality of our products and services and of a healthy desire for profit.
and practices is inconsistent with the spirit of the antitrust laws."
The Westinghouse complaint, recently lodged with the Federal Communications Commission, explains why it is so difficult for a local station to connect with some of some kind of reasonable limits.
That doesn't make what Westinghouse is charging less valid, merely less heroic.
The company says that local stations are given previews of the shows the networks are presenting before they are to be aired that
a station manager doesn't have the time to find a substitute and promote it sufficiently to hope to get an audience.
The complaint also alleges that local stations are finding it
The argument also can be made that, when the agencies instead of any three network offices controlled program production, the simple multiplicity of sources en-
Nicbolas Von Hoffman
(c) 1974 King Features Syndicate
DURING THE heyday of radio and through the 1950s, the networks in effect sold blocks of the time to advertising agencies that produced the shows, hired the stars and had responsibility for much that went on the air.
more and more difficult to buy substitute material that isn't directly or indirectly controlled by the networks.
The complaints about this system were many and varied. The ad agencies cranked out an ineffable amount of dull junk, less than less violent, old脱 re-ons from the graa of Perry Mason.
But credit may not belong with the agencies, only with the courts. But you don't have tolerated the sort of programs routinely aired now.
couraged variety and the possibility of quality.
WITHOUT buying the argument that letting the ad agencies control program content would improve it, the problem of power to the three networks consolidates the dissemination of identical monochromatic material and reduces the possibility of local stations having any unique or different contribution.
Whatever the reasons, drama and entertainment on TV 20 years ago was sometimes extraordinarily good.
“If this is allowed to continue, local affiliated stations will ultimately perform functions not derived from cable TV outlets.”
"The networks are trying to change local stations into more extensions of the national network program pipeline," the Westinghouse petition to the FCC alleges.
"Each year local affiliated stations have less involvement in and responsibility for the totality of the programming offered to the public IN THE FACILITIES TO THEIR COMMUNITIES.
The immediate shape of this quarrel concerns the probability that the networks to be opened to users evening news programs soon.
What Westinghouse fears is that the extra half-hour won't come out of prime time but out of our own local stations for their own news.
According to Westinghouse, such a change would increase network profits by $75 million a year and respond loss to local stations.
This, coupled with the revenues the networks get from the stations they own, would give ABC, CBS and NBC more than half the revenues of the entire industry to go along with their control of over two-birds of the air time.
LOCAL station owners have been so bad, so cheap, so vulgarly reactionary they have worked our works look like the good guys.
Nevertheless, you don't even have to be as smart as Spiro Agnew to realize that, whether they're good guys or rotten eggs, having three networks and at most a few hundred people to tell you news and entertainment is inherently to dangerous.
It's not easy to defend these characters, but no one ever said that the advantages and safeguarded attached to digital control are decentralized control are either obvious or instantly apparent.
Westinghouse wants the Congress or the FCC to give local stations help to balance between them and the networks.
This might protect Westinghouse's profits against network encoachment. It might also decrease the amount of police drama violence, but it wouldn't open up the industry much and it certainly wouldn't encourage that diversity of
voices that the theory says a democracy ought to have.
THERE are many ways that could be done in this industry, where government power has been used to create the three network informational oligodvy.
Networks could be forbidden to own television stations. No station could be allowed to broadcast more than three hours of material a day from the office, or making the commercial base for two or three new competing networks.
The present structure could be left intact, but all the legal barriers to pay-TV, most of which have been fostered by outfits like Westinghouse working in cabbies with the company. Now is the time to reduce and decentralize network power.
We're in a full, a quiet period. If it isn't done now, the next Agnew may do it in a manner we might not like. or the next moment, we could vanage vantages of centralized broadcast control for extrasociational government, may just tell them what to say.