8A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2008
STUDENT SENATE
Candidates set to debate today
BY LUKE MORRIS
Imorris@kansan.com
Students curious about Student Senate coalitions' issues and stances will have another opportunity to hear from each coalition's presidential and vice presidential candidates at today's Student Senate debate.
The Student Senate Elections Commission is playing host to the debate, which is at 5 p.m. in Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.
"We're not expecting a lot of people to come, but we hope some of the issues brought up in previous debates will get a closer look," said Rohit Venkatasubban, Student Senate Elections commissioner.
Coalitions already participated in two debates this semester, one hosted by The University Daily Kansan and one hosted by Kansas
Athletics. Despite this, presidential candidates said that they were not sick of debating their issues and platforms.
"We want to have as many opportunities as possible to present the issues," said Austin Kelly, Connect's presidential candidate. "If people wanted us to debate every other day, we would."
United Students' presidential candidate Adam McGonigle said that debates provided another line of communication with students.
"I think the best thing we can do and we've been trying to do this semester is talking to students," McGonigle said. "By doing that you find out what they think is important to them."
Venkatasubban said the debate's format would be similar to previous debates'. It will feature a panel asking the candidates questions. Presidential and vice presidential
debate info
What: Student Senate debate presented by Student Senate Elections Commission
When: 5 p.m. today
Where: Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union
Who: Presidential and vice presidential candidates
candidates will answer the panel's questions together as a coalition.
"It'll follow up on things that happened in the last two debates or weren't covered in the first two," Venkatasubban said.
Students of Liberty presidential candidate Adam Wood said that he hoped this debate would allow candidates an opportunity to comment on other coalitions' platforms.
"In previous debates, we only got to talk about our own platforms," Wood said. "I'd like to hear what United Students and Connect think about our platform."
All three candidates said they had similar game plans going into the debate. Each wanted to discuss their platforms and prove their sincerity to them.
"I feel confident that we can answer questions completely without extensively preparing because there are things we want to bring we really care about," Kelly said.
Wood said that his preparation included looking at statistics regarding various issues, but that his answers were candid.
"I just go up there and say what I think," Wood said. "I think that's why we come off like we do."
Edited by Jared Duncan
DRUGS
Lectures shed light on major dealers
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARLINGTON, Va. — Desperate to wiretap their target, federal drug agents early one morning scaled the roof of an auto garage that by day served as a well-protected Harlem headquarters for Mr. Untouchable, Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, a major New York heroin dealer who had eluded prison for a decade. They dropped by rope through a skylight and placed the bug.
It didn't work.
Several nights later, rope in hand, they were back on the roof. They installed another bug.
This time, "all we got was a loud buzz," said Mary Buckley, recalling an investigation three decades ago in which the Drug Enforcement Administration sent her undercover at age 26 to help catch Barnes.
Barnes and one of his major competitors, Frank Lucas. Their lectures Tuesday at the DEA Museum kicked off a series celebrating the agency's 35th birthday by recalling its biggest triumphs.
Buckley and another retired DEA agent, Lew Rice, who once headed DEA's New York office, described their role in convicting
Rice and Buckley provided a stiff dose of reality about the 1970s clash between drug dealers and cops in New York City, which has provided rich lore for the movies. Hollywood has transformed this collision into a mythic era through films like "Sericpo," "Prince of the City," "The French Connection" and its sequel, "American Gangster."
"It's hard to defend against that Hollywood machine," said Rice, who spent 18 months prepping Lucas to testify for the government in return for a reduced sentence. Rice said Lucas was nothing like the man portrayed by actor Denzel Washington in "American Gangster."
Born in a 1973 merger of drug agencies, the DEA was devoted to undercover work but inexperienced and ill-adapted to it, Buckley said. Far from glamour and high-tech wizardry, her world in the mid-1970s meant sleepless nights on spike heels in smoke-filled joints with dangerous men, wearing a bulky concealed transmitter that burned her skin, using index card files rather than computer databases and searching for functioning pay phones in a world without cell phones.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Although sentenced to life in prison in 1977, Barnes testified against other dealers to win release in 1998 and a new identity from the witness protection program. Buckley said he had a second motive for helping prosecutors: His henchmen had promised to take care of his family but he became "furious when his associates started dating his old lady."
Retired DEA agents sued the filmmakers for damages because they ended the movie with an on-screen note saying Lucas' cooperation "led to the conviction of three-quarters of New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency"
As part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's 35th anniversary agents are talking about what it took to convict Frank Lucas, above, and competitor Leroy "Nicky" Barnes in the Harlem heroin trade, as the agency highlights some of its biggest triumphs.
There is no such agency and Lucas played no role in convictions of NYPD Special Investigations Unit detectives, they argued. A judge threw the case out because the movie never says a federal
drug agent was corrupt.
When a movie says it is "based on reality" and uses that kind of closing notice, Rice said, "I think you've got a responsibility to get it right."
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bear Stearns President and Chief Executive Officer Alan Schwartz, right, talks with attorney Robert Bennett, left, as he waits to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, before the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the government bailout of Bear Stearns.
Reserve defends Bear Stearns rescue
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bernanke and Treasury Department Undersecretary Robert Steel said that the conse-
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Bush administration on Thursday defended the decision to rescue Bear Stearns amid questions by lawmakers about why the government was helping Wall Street investment houses but not people on Main Street.
sequences to the U.S. economy and financial system would have been far more serious had the government allowed the nation's fifth largest investment house to go bankrupt.
brink of a recession.
"Given the
Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee questioned why the Reserve was willing to put such a large amount of money at risk to protect Wall Street while as many as 3 million homeowners are facing the risk of defaulting on their mortgages with the administration balking at greater efforts to help them.
"Was this a justified rescue to prevent a systemic collapse of financial markets or a $30 bill
"... the damage caused by a default by Bear Stearns could have been severe and extremely difficult to contain."
exceptional pressures on the global economy and financial system, the damage caused by a default by Bear Stearns could have been severe and extremely difficult to contain. Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee.
BEN BERNANKE Federal Reserve chairman
The panel conducted a five-hour hearing as lawmakers sought to understand the decisions made during the hectic weekend of March 14-15 after Bear Stearns informed the Reserve that it was on the verge of having to file for bankruptcy protection because nervous creditors were demanding to be repaid.
The investment house was purchased by JP Morgan Chase & Co. with assistance from the Reserve in the form of a loan backed by $30 billion of Bear Stearns assets. JP Morgan has agreed to absorb the first $1 billion of losses if the value of the assets declines, but taxpayers are at risk for the remaining $29 billion.
Bear Stearns, with a stock price around $150 per share a year ago, was sold for $10 a share, becoming the biggest victim of a severe credit crisis that hit financial markets in August.
That crisis, which was triggered by a prolonged housing slump and cascading mortgage defaults, has made it harder for consumers and businesses to get loans and helped to push the country to the
lion taxpayer bail-out for a Wall Street firm while people on Main Street struggle to pay their mortgages?" Senate Banking Committee Chairman
Christopher Doddasked Bernanke and the other witnesses.
Bernanke said that government's effort was not a bailout for Bear Stearns shareholders, who will suffer big losses, but an effort to protect the financial system and ultimately the entire economy, which could have faced severe consequences from Bear Stearns' bankruptcy.
"The adverse impact of a default would not have been confined to the financial system but would have been felt broadly in the real economy through its effect on asset values and credit availability," said Bernanke. On Wednesday, Bernanke had for the first time raised the possibility that the current economic troubles could push the country into a recession.
Steel said that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was actively monitoring four days of marathon negotiations that began after Bear Stearns notified the Fed on March 13 that it was one day away from having to file for bankruptcy protection. Steel said the administration supported the Fed's decisions.
Most of the questions on the deal centered on the value of the assets the Fed is now holding as collateral for the loan.
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