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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Wednesday, June 11. 1986
Grants are better earned
The University of Kansas gained one valuable research grant last week and lost another. The University was fortunate in both cases.
The other grant would have come to KU for the wrong reasons. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and a few other senators proposed in an amendment that $80.6 million for defense research be assigned to 11 universities, KU among them. The amendment would have bypassed the appropriate channel for awarding research grants.
KU gained its grant with Upjohn Co. of Kalamazoo, Mich., for the right reasons. The grant, worth several million dollars, will go to the pharmaceutical chemistry department. A spokesman for Upjohn said his company chose KU because of the quality of the pharmaceutical department and the reputation of its chairman, Ronald Borchardt, Summerfield distinguished professor.
KU won the Upjohn grant by developing a top-quality program staffed by top-quality people.
Backers of the amendment
said it was warranted because grants were awarded disproportionately to elite individuals with overblown reputations.
The amendment was killed by the Senate last week. We, as members of this University and as citizens of this nation, are better off without it.
And stopping arbitrary grants to universities may someday benefit KU.
Like most pork-barrel legislation, this amendment would have hurt the nation by sending money where it wouldn't have done the most good for all.
The amendment was pork-barrel politics, an attempt to grab some money for the home folks who could be expected to show their appreciation eventually in the voting booth.
Our University is building its reputation. The grant from Upjohn is evidence. Future Senate majority leaders may decide that KU's reputation is overblown and that KU is getting more money than it deserves.
Lawrence foreign policy
If so, such pork-barrel legislation will be less likely to pass because this one didn't.
Ernest Angino, Lawrence city commissioner, did the right thing last week in refusing to sign the commission resolution that would have promoted a U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in Lawrence.
It was OK for the city's government to offer Lawrence as the site for a possible meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The city has already done that twice.
date to conduct city business, not a mandate to represent the citizens of Lawrence on foreign affairs.
The cacophony of special interests in Washington is too disruptive already. Lawrence doesn't need to add its voice.
But lobbying the federal government to hold a summit meeting should be beyond the scope of city government. When the commissioners were elected, they received a man-
The citizens of Lawrence are represented by their own votes in national elections, by Congress and by any special interest group they wish to join.
As Angino said, cities should not have foreign policies.
More important than anything else, they have the constitutional right to free speech and free assembly. That is enough.
Election name game
Name recognition is the hot, new concept in election politics.
Prospective candidates for Congress or statewide offices don't dare declare themselves candidates until a poll tells them how widely recognized their names are. Those who conduct political polls and those who report political polls continually try to gauge which candidates have the most recognition.
But more and more of us are declaring ourselves independent of either political party. Most of us still don't bother to learn as much as we should
The emphasis on name recognition has risen as the old emphasis on political parties has declined. Most U.S. citizens have never known enough about candidates to make intelligent choices. They used to compensate for their lack of knowledge by voting the party ticket.
about political candidates, so we vote for personalities.
In fact, political scientists say that most voters just pick the name that's most familiar to them. Hence the victories of LaRouche candidates in Illinois — perhaps because their names sounded more American than the names of the other candidates.
There are other effects of the phenomenon of name recognition: incumbents, who already have it, are more likely to win elections; and challengers, who usually don't have it, must spend a lot of money to get it.
Also, candidates and their campaign consultants are more likely to give us slick commercials that emphasize personal qualities and downplay issues and party ideologies.
Name recognition may be the hot item for political candidates, but voters should throw some cold water on it.
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News staff
Cindy McCurry...Editor
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Business staff
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Stephan should account for the cash
We can almost see them sitting there in the inner sanctum of the attorney general's office, Bob Stephen and his closest political advisers, on that day when they decided to go for another four years in office.
"Won't we have a credibility problem?" says Stephan. "After all, it was just last fall when we promised to retire from public life if people would stop asking about the blackouts and get away with a 180-degree stin now."
"People have short memories," says adviser Huey.
"And since the Legislature has gone home, we won't have to worry about lying to any investigating committee or the election," says adver Dewey.
"We won't have a credibility problem," chimes in Louie. "The press will."
"Yeah," says Huey. "We won't run against Dennis Moore. We'll run against the press, go for the sympathy vote."
Thus we got statements like this from Stephan, the attorney general of Kansas, when reporters renewed a lawsuit against him for $24,000 in hush money came from:
"It isn't a problem with me, and that's all I'm concerned about."
You'll recall what the reporters were asking about: Stephan settled a politically embarrassing lawsuit last year by paying $24,000 to his former wife, the lawyer who accused sexual harassment. Two private lawyers — Vermiller Miller of Wichita, a
It was a black-bag job,... the kind of cash-stuffed into-envelopes affair that brought down ... the presidency of Richard Nixon.
former attorney general, and Bob Storey of Topeka, a former state senator — delivered the money in untraceable, unauditable cash.
lack McNeely
Although not illegal, the money-
running skirted normal procedures
for seating lawyers against public
litigation have been abolished
ladies and gentlemen, the kind of
Staff Columnist
cash-stuffed into-envelopes affair that brought down the administration of former Gov. Robert Docking, to mention the presidency of Richard
But from Stephan, the highest law enforcement officer in Kansas, running now for a third four-year term, we get an assertion that the only Kansas concerned about how he danced on the edge of legitality to run cash up the street is the Army trumpke. are "some editorial writers around the state and a few reporters."
If that's true, then a lot more people than we imagined are working as editorial writers and reporters in this state.
This isn't just bad government. It's bad politics.
By claiming to be a victim of the dirty-laundry boys, those hounds in the press corps, Stephan is ignoring the advice of Harry Truman. Don't they come out every day, and they come out every day, and you don't. That axiom of politics has been
expressed another way: Don't pick fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel.
Let's hope for a lot of ink on this topic before the election in November. Maybe a lot of ink can shed a little light.
And let's have an accounting — now — of where all that money came from. We should demand an accounting for the same reasons we make politicians disclose who finances their election campaigns.
And by an accounting, we don't mean simply a press release showing a list of names with dollar signs after them. We mean documents — photocopies of receipts for cash, bank records, telephone logs, whatever documentary evidence exists — that consist of thousands of dollars in cash actually came from the people Stephan identifies as the sources.
And let's have, at the least, an apology from Stephan, an admission that black job jobs are below the average. We expect from our elected officials.
Perhaps we can get all that. It beats lynching the reporters.
Media watchdog is blind to the right
It's one thing to make a prize jackass of yourself in the privacy of your own home, on the job or before a role, for example of us do it if a one time or another.
It's something else to do it in front of an audience of millions of strangers.
So I almost felt sorry for Reevd Irine when he recently showed up on network television and put his foot in his mouth all the way to the knee.
Irvine, a retired federal bureaucrat, runs something that calls itself Accuracy in Media
When Irvine's turn at the microphone came, he was almost
Members of the audience were invited to step up to a microphone and question the panel, which was comprised of people, people, and members of government.
As a professional media watchdog, he was in the studio audience when Ted Koppel and ABC put on a special show that highlighted television controversies involving television.
Mike Royko Chicago Tribune
quivering with indignation. He's the kind of guy who always seems to be indignant about something.
In this instance, he was upset with a Soviet journalist who was part of the panel.
Irvine shirly accused the Soviet journalist, who makes frequent TV appearances, of habitually telling lies. "Whoppers," he called them.
Irvine was approaching full bluster, which he does quickly. But Kopper interrupted him long enough to ask if he could describe the big lie, the great whip-
In fact, Irvine said, the Soviet journalist had told a big whopper only moments ago on that very show.
per, that the Soviet journalist had just told.
Irvine stood there at the microphone blinking. A sheepish look oozed across his face.
And he finally said: "Uh, it slips my mind."
Some advocate of accuracy.
But it wasn't really surprising. When it comes to accuracy, Irvine's Accuracy in Media doesn't have much of a track record.
The name itself is an example of mislabeling. What it should be called is something like Right-Wingers for More Right-Wing Opinions in Media.
That's really what it amounts to. For years, Irvine and his organization have been trying to persuade people that it exists simply to en-
hold the view of us, primarily the networks and major papers — to be free of political bias.
But just about everything it does makes clear that what it wants is more right-wing bias in news coverage.
to bear Irvine tell it, the nation's press is in the clutches of its lullers. It seems to have escaped his notice that the majority of the most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives and that the vast majority of U.S. newspapers habitually endorse Republican candidates for president.
What Irvine and Accuracy in Media see are Soviet clones behind the news desks.
He's even said there is considerable circumstantial evidence that the Russian secret service, the MI6, held a mole in the hierarchy of ABC news.
When ABC asked him to give them the evidence so they could find this Soviet agent, he declined.
Perhaps that, too, slipped his mind.
After watching Irwin on TV, he called the Accuracy in Media headquarters in Washington, D.C., hoping to ask Irwin whether he felt as goofy as his host. I also wondered whether he was amphibious on his head at parties.
He wasn't there, but one of his aides said she could speak for him.
So we asked her whether they had ever criticized a conservative newsman with the gusto that they have shown in going after people like David Brinkley. Or even without the gusto, Maybe just a mild rebuke?
She sniffed: "Are there any conser vatives on TV news?"
Any conservatives? What a question. How about George Willel? He's all over television. He's also the most influential political columnist in the United States, as well as a big buddy of President Reagan.
Yes, she said, Accuracy in Media had indeed criticized George Will. For what?
"His ties. Oh, (laughter) those ties he wears! He should buy some new ones."
That's pretty rough stuff, but George Will has a thick hide and can take it.
Anyway, we never did reach Irvine, but we'll be looking for him on TV.
Maybe "Saturday Night Live" will ask him to be a guest host. They can use the laughs.