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Wednesday, July 17, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
South Africa
Time was up for insufficient economic sanctions
Despite sharp protests from opponents of South Africa's crumbling apartheid system, President Bush ended a five-year U.S. economic embargo against Pretoria last week.
Unfortunately, Bush was correct, and Congress is to blame.
Bush countered criticism of his decision by arguing that he was left no choice under the 1986 law Congress passed. Bush — a long-time opponent of sanctions against South Africa — must have been pleased to find himself in that position.
The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act was not comprehensive enough. It did not insist on voting rights for Black South Africans.
As far as the act went was to demand the legalization of political parties and the free participation in them by all South Africans. This is an important component of representative democracy, but membership in a party
without a vote to back up one's allegiance is worthless.
However, Congress should not attempt to renew sanctions now because they would be cited by apartheid supporters as proof that the United States cannot be satisfied nor deal in good faith.
Under the terms of U.S. demands, white South Africans have earned an opportunity to progress without the burden of sanctions.
De Klerk's government has repealed the segregationist Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act, canceled a state of emergency, released at least most political prisoners and agreed to enter into talks with Black African leaders.
It should be made clear to them, however, that if progress toward equality does not con-
form to expectations it will be inflicted in an effort to achieve more sweeping than those obtained so far.
Chris Siron for the editorial board
Gates should move over
The results are not pretty, to say the least, but they need not be seen as wholesale institutional humiliation. The dedicated men and women of the department must not react as if it were.
The Los Angeles Police Department has been examined, put on the operating table and publicly dissected by a special commission in the aftermath of the horrifying Rodney King videotaped beating in March.
What adds urgency to the proposed slate of reforms, however, is the considered judgment that time is not on the side of a department whose misuse of force is not only aggravated by racism and bias but is in part caused by deeply embedded internal management defects.
Consider the wisdom of the commission's findings. It did not simply identify the existence of overuse or misuse of force, but in one key
section of the 200-plus-page report narrowed the problem down to repeat offenders within the department. That raised the unavoidable question of why a core group of force-missing officers are permitted to proceed apace in violation of the department's guidelines.
The panel suggested that Daryl Gates, who has served this city as a police officer for 42 years and as its vice president, updip smooth the way for his successor.
Gates, for his part, should not prolong the骂. Despite his suggested intention July 9 to stay on until the City Charter reform is enacted — a process that could be a year or two or even more away — he should accept the honorable way out. That would mean加速发展 and assimilating now in an orderly transition that might wind up naming an interim chief well in advance of any City Charter change.
From The Los Angeles Times
What has become abundantly clear is the realization that Israel intends to remain the aggressor nation in this volatile area and a perpetual threat to all its neighbors. The question now comes to mind is that now that Iraqi military might has been given a stunning blow, who will be accused of being the fully armed aggressor — against whom or what is the massive Israeli military buildup aimed? Surely it cannot be for defensive purposes but for downright aggression and threat to others
As expected, the question of eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the Mideast has overshadowed the real issue of the conflict in the region just as the Israeli government just had when the Bush initiative was declared.
From the Saudi Gazette in Jiddah,
Saudi Arabia.
Israel remains a threat
were Fiberglas hammers
Hammer price justified
In the July 10 Kansan, an editorial reported that the University of Kansas Medical Center spent $80 on two hammers and $100 on a pencil sharpener. It went on to conclude that the Med Center "needlessly spent $180." Needlessly? Is $40 for a hammer "ridiculously high" as the editorial put it? I don't think so. It is my understanding that the hammers
These hammers are used for work around electrical equipment and wiring and are hardly "common household items." Have you been to a hardware store lately to price these hammers? Even worse, how much would it cost the state if workers were to use common hammers around electrical equipment and happen to hit a 220-volt line? (Not even considering the worker's health.)
LETTERS to the EDITOR
As for the pencil sharpener in question, I remember a report in the Lawrence Journal-World that the Med Center had to replace the pencil sharpeners on the state contract three or four times a year. Assuming they are the same sharpeners offered
by the Office Supply Store on the main campus, they cost about $13
It seems to me that if the new sharpener lasted two years it not only would have paid for itself but saved a lot of headaches caused by scrambling to find another sharpener in time for the next test.
In this time of budget crisis it is easy to cry waste and point a finger, but if we don't see the forest for the trees we are here we ever to make a dent in the waste of our state resources. The snow is how much we spent to find our so-called excessive expenditures out of 50,000 vouchers?
Todd Kirkham
Larned senior
Defenseless consumer suffers at hands of sneaky mechanic
Since I can remember, Mr. Crow has fixed my car.
When I was home, I could call Mr. Crow at any hour with any request and he would repair my car, always at a low price.
And I think of Mr. Crow, the man who not only would fix my car but bring it back to my house when he was finished. I've thought of him often as I reflect on what has been a nightmarish automobile summer.
When the air conditioning went out in my car, I assumed that I would just use the Yellow Pages and find the nearest repair shop.
My first problem was that I can find about four major streets in Dallas, plus the side street that runs in front of my apartment. So I picked the first place that I knew how to get to.
I drove the wreck there. And waited and waited.
"Well, little lady. "" That should have been my first clue. "Looks like you need a new compressor," the man cured the corners of his mouth curling up.
Sure. Why not, I thought. It was all too easy to damage. All wanted was to be cool and cool.
"So, how much are we talking?" I
"You gotta get the whole unit," he said
"So, how much are we talking?" I said in case he had not heard me the first time.
"About $500, plus labor."
My car may not even be worth $500,
but broke into hysterics and drove
hom.
But the problem is that if I had had the money, I would have forked it over because I don't know anything
Staff columnis
Tiffany Harness
about my car.
Fortunately (I think) I didn't have that much spare change, so I went back to the Yellow Pages and spotted another repair shop I knew how to find
"Did you check your belts before you came?" a man asked.
"Well, no." The truth is, before
mention it, the belts were not to
mention what, the belts were.
He lifted the hood and pulled out a frayed piece of rubber.
He looked at me, belt in hand, and shook his head in amazement.
I am not the only one who knows next to nothing about cars.
Take the two people I know well in Dallas.
My roommate scraped the entire driver's side of her car on a pole in an empty parking lot. She took her car and handed over a very heavy check.
We can assume that the rate was reasonable. But we don't know. We can't tell.
And I really feel for my roommate, because she is a bigger car Delbert than I am. Until recently, she thought gas and oil were one and the same.
The other person I know recently totaled his car. So after weeks of searching through classifieds and after endless conversations about what he had found, he eyed his dream car, an identical model to the heap he
had wrecked. So he bought the new (used) one.
He had to hire a mechanic to check it out and make sure it was in working order, because none of us was going to do that. That was a good step, we all thought.
The car received the mechanic's stamp of approval and the mechanic received about $100 for about one half hour of work.
The car broke down within a week.
So of course, he took it to it yet another mechanic who said it would cost $400 to have it fixed. He paid that.
Within two days, the car wouldn't start.
Is it fairly clear that these have n been good car days?
We really have to learn something about our cars — that is, if they ever get out of the shops.
I was trying to pinpoint whose fault it is that I don't know more about my car.
Is it my father's fault, who is fairly car-literate and never handed down his knowledge? Or is it Mr. Crow's fault for always being so dependable in those times when my dad couldn't pull through? Or perhaps I can some-thing about it for not insisting that I learn more about cars so I wouldn't be cheated.
No, responsibility lies with me.
And I have made a summer resolution to learn something, anything about automobiles.
I'll get on it tomorrow, as soon as I get my car out of the shop.
Tiffany Harness is a Hutchinson senior majoring in journalism and African-American studies.
She is currently a summer intern at the Dallas Morning News.
New Supreme Court threatens to undo past judicial decisions
For a generation, conservatives complained and campaigned against an assertive, activist Supreme Court — and now they have their own. As a result, Congress will be dealing with a growing agenda of measures to undo what the court has wrought.
In the new judicial order, the activists are conservatives, because it takes a decision to change a decision. The last of the court's liberals, retraining from the bench, take the new majority of radical decisions.
It is a role reversal that will be reflected in national politics for a long time to come, as a narrow conservative majority widens on a
Walter R. Mears
Syndicated columnist
court where all but one of the nine justices was nominated by a Republican president.
In an earlier era, issues that became causes that mobilized the Republican right flowed from such decisions as the court's guarantee of abortion rights and its ruling against prayer in the public schools.
issue: One of Richard Nixon's themes was that the court had gone too far in weakening the police against criminals. Now the criminal justice system is doing the other way, and it is librarians who argue the court is going too far.
Law and order was a durable GOP
"My most vivid childhood memory of the Supreme Court was of the Impeach Earl Warren" signs that lined Highway 17 near Savannah, "the place where appeals court judge nominated to replace the court's leading liberal.
A childhood memory recounted by Clarence Thomas, President Bush's nominee to succeed retiring Justice Marshall, dramatizes the change.
"I didn't quite understand who Eliar Wrenrell fellow was, but I knew he was in some kind of trouble," he said.
Since the era of the Warren Court, a Republican campaign litany has been a promise to choose justice who would interpret the Constitution strictly. It was with Bush, as he repeated it during Monday's announcement of the Thomas nomination.
In his final dissent, Marshall said the conservative majority was acting radically by discarding precedents to permit the use of evidence about victims and their families in murder sentencing.
"Power, not reason, is the new
currency of this court's decision making." Marshall protested. "The majority sends a clear signal that essentially all decisions implementing the personal liberties protected by the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment are open to re-examination."
Two of the major controversies now before Congress stem from court decisions. One is a civil-rights bill seeking to reverse six rulings by the court that make it more difficult for minorities and women to prove job discrimination. House-approved measure that would overrule the court and permit federally subsidized birth-control clinics to counsel pregnant women about
abortion.
Both face veto threats from Bush, the former on grounds that the Democrats want legislation that would lead to hiring quotas, the latter as part of his blanket threat-to try to block pro-choice legislation.
When Marshall retired, Sen. Tim Wirth, D-Colo., told the Senate that the prospect of an even more conservative court is a call to arms to Congress to pass laws enforcing that are not upheld from the bench.
"We must step in where the court has and will fail us," he said.
- Walter R. Mears is a columnist for The Associated Press.
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