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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
1M
Monday, April 14, 1986
Trickle not enough
The U.S. debt topped the $2 trillion mark last week and is just a hop, skip and a jump away from reaching the debt limit passed by Congress.
The debt was officially $2,008,210,100,000 as of April 3 — only $70 billion below the limit — and government officials are expecting a further increase. In fact, Treasury officials say the administration probably will have to request a new ceiling before long, even though the one set in December was supposed to cover spending through Sept. 30.
The idea of the administration's seeking a new debt limit seems ridiculously counterproductive. The point of the ceiling is to stop the wild and rapid growth of the national debt. The limit was set to force the administration to start working within its means.
Most students know that when their checking account runs dry, they have two choices — make more or spend less. Unfortunately, governments don't heed that principle.
Decades of deficit spending have led to the accumulation of the huge debt, but the Reagan administration deserves most of the credit for its incomprehensible numbers.
When Reagan was elected in 1980, he pushed his idea of great economies — increase spending, decrease taxes and get rid of the national debt. Some people called it voodoo economics. He called it the trickle-down theory.
We're still waiting, and all we've seen is that in five years, the debt has doubled and he's still asking for more credit.
Perhaps Reagan knows something he's not telling. Perhaps at the last minute, he'll pull a $2 trillion check out of his hat. Perhaps $2 trillion will trickle down from the sky.
More likely, he'll retire gracelessly in 1988 and find fame as a witch doctor, thus passing his debt onto the next administration.
He should have reconsidered his theory when the debt topped $1 trillion in his first year. But he kept telling his critics that the plan would work, just wait and see.
The University of Kansas Medical Center recently made a good move to help protect its students from a potentially life-threatening disease by finding the money to pay for vaccinations.
Wise precaution
The Med Center allocated $28,000 from its administrative budget to the School of Medicine to pay for hepatitis B vaccinations because the students often are involved in situations that can threaten their health.
After this semester, the hospital will vaccinate all second-year students before they start working with patients.
Hepatitis B is a life-threatening virus which can cause anything from nausea to liver cancer.
Med Center officials said
Last year, Blue Cross and Blue Shield agreed to take care of the cost, but the students' insurance policies had a $100 deductible.
they were concerned that students might not have been vaccinated in the past because of the cost. The vaccine is given as a series of three shots over six months and costs $100.
Students, according to the Med Center, risk what is called a needle stick anytime they give shots to patients with hepatitis B.
The Med Center has moved to take some of the risk out of getting a medical education. In the words of the Med Center's chairman of the department of family practice, "It's nothing to fool with."
The Med Center,rightly,has decided not to do so.
Dairy cow confusion
The federal government's program to reduce the surplus of dairy products by buying and slaughtering a million cows is now in full swing. At the same time, it may be considering approval of a chemical to produce milk-gushing Super Cows.
In another corner of the government, an experimental substance that could boost a single cow's milk production by 40 percent may be close to approval.
The Agriculture Department recently began a $1.8 billion program to buy and kill about 10 percent of the nation's milk cows over the next 18 months in an attempt to cut milk production. The USDA says it hopes to reduce dairy production by about 8 percent, thereby saving the $2 billion it spends each year to buy surplus cheese, butter and milk.
A synthetically produced hormone that matches a
natural growth hormone is being researched at several universities. These universities have produced Super Cows which have a 40 percent higher milk production.
Although the Food and Drug Administration is officially keeping mum — according to standard policy — many in the dairy industry expect the FDA to grant a commercial license to market the hormone as early as next year.
If the hormone is approved,
it could more than negate the
effort of the Agriculture
Department to cut down on milk production.
Widespread use of the hormone would cause an even more severe surplus.
The USDA and FDA may be separate organs in the government body, but they are necessarily intertwined. Now that the government is taking a positive step to alleviate the dairy surplus, it shouldn't nullify its own efforts.
News staff
News staff
Michael Totty ... Editor
Lauretta McMillen ... Managing editor
Emma Barbette ... Editing team
Cindy McCurry ... Campus editor
David Giles ... Sports editor
Wilfredo Lee ... Photo editor
Susanne Shaw ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Brett McCabe ... Business manager
David Nixon ... Retail sales manager
Jim Williamson ... Campus manager
Lori Eckert ... Classified manager
Caroline Innes ... Production manager
Pallan Lee ... National manager
John Oberzan ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Attention may be LaRouche's downfall
It appears that sudden success is going to be the ruin of Lyndon LaRouche.
Until the recent Illinois primary, LaRouche was leading an almost perfect life for a fringe character on the U.S. political scene.
Most people knew nothing about him, other than the fact that he liked to run for president and, if they happened to see one of his television commercials, that he looked like a prosperous accountant.
Those who bothered to listen to him were hard-pressed to tell exactly, or even vaguely, what he was talking about.
Despite the recent panic in Illinois, the fact is that LaRouche has few active supporters. And they've had to compete at airport terminals with the Moondies and other odd creatures.
But his career as a fringe character provided LaRouche with a good living. His cult, small as it is, managed to hustle the gullible for enough contributions and shaky loans to provide him with the comfortable existence of a Virginia country souire.
He could sit in his fortified mansion and fancy himself a genius power in
Mike Royko Chicago Tribune
U. S. life, sending out word that any number of prominent people who hardly knew his name were plotting to do him in.
But that's over now. Because a couple of his glassy-eyed followers happened to luck their way into a victory in the Illinois Democratic primary, LaRouche now is getting more attention than he ever had or dreamed of.
For the moment, he and his small cult are delighted with it. They think that this attention is the beginning of their demented revolution. They think that millions of people will rush to join their cause.
The poor whackos. If they look closely, they'll see that it is the end.
The worst thing that can happen to people like LaRouche is to get the attention they think they've been denied. As long as little is known about them, they can move in the shadows, cadge a little here, con a little there.
But then they make the mistake of bumbling their way into the public's consciousness. And that's the end.
As an example, there is an article about LaRouche in this week's issue of Newsweek magazine, which will be read by millions.
The article digs into LaRouche's past and pinyin points a period of his life when former followers say he underwent severe personality change. and why.
It seems that sometime in the 1960s, he and his first wife split. This was after LaRouche had been a Marxist, a socialist and a follower of various left-wing philosophies.
It's not clear exactly where on the political spectrum he was wandering at that time. But after his wife left her job, she was living with one of his female followers.
Apparently his magnetism was lost on her, because she eventually went away with another man.
Ah, the pain of rejection. That, according to Newsweek, was when LaRouche became even more unhinged, brooding in his apartment while surrounded by canned goods and bodyguards.
After that, he became even more extreme and began playing an "egostripping" head game with members of his cult, whose heads weren't screwed on too securely to begin with.
So, it appears that the trauma of being dumped by a girlfriend may have sent LaRouche lurching into his present political dream world. Until recently, though, few knew or cared.
But now that the Illinois primary has given him instant fame, his strange past is coming out. He's no longer going to be some strange bird who turns up occasionally on the television screen, droning on and on about his economic theories.
The key to people like LaRouche is that they want to be taken seriously. He really believes in the conspiracy and plots that exist only in his mind.
But can people take a guy seriously when they learn that he began seeing these plots only when his girlfriend took a hike on him?
No, LaRouche made the mistake of coming out of the shadows.
And like the clown who lurches into the circus spotlight, all he's going to get are laughs.
A look inside the brain of a columnist
Submitted for your approval: one aggressive conservative columnist trapped in a world where complex ideas and trite quotations merge. Look! On a signpost ahead . . . You are now entering . . . the 'I-Can't' Think-of-a-Column-Subject-to-Write-On" Zone.
Did you ever wonder where columnists come up with their ideas for writing a column?
Today, we will journey into the "Forbidden Zone," that secret place known only to those willing to rewrite their column numerous times, those willing to answer their telephones at 3 a.m. to debate an irate reader, those willing to be stopped on Jayhawk Boulevard to answer more irate readers' questions, those willing to face possible hostility from irate professors and those willing to sacrifice their grade point averages for a political ideology.
Hello and good evening, I'm your host for the next 17 column inches or so. Today we will delve into the mind of a columnist. We will try to discover what kinds of conflicts occur in the hollow cave of distorted views and worn-out cliches.
We begin with what is really two minds, the left and right side of the brain. This is where the conflict occurs. One side proposes the idea and rejects it. This goes back and forth until both come to an agreement.
Victor Goodpasture
Staff columnist
Mondale, the right side for Reagan. In this columnist, there is an oddity. Usually, the left side is the dominating side, but in this columnist's case, the opposite is true.
We will, through the miracle of modern technology, for the first time, be able to hear the conversation between the two sides of the brain.
For example, the left side voted for
The conversation may shock some, horrify others, or force people to totally alter their perspectives of their very own existence.
We now join the conversation, in progress.
Left: "... What are you talking about? We cann't write about that! We'll be sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for pandering to ideas that border on fascism. In fact, with no gun control laws, no doubt an assassination may take place."
Right: "So you think a column on the mediocre standards of the William Allen White School of Journalism is a no-oo?"
L: "Definitely. I suggest something that concerns the students of this University directly."
R: "How about another column slamming the Student Senate? That's
always a lot of fun "
L: "Forget it. Some students don't even know it exists."
R: "Well, we could do another one condemning the Soviet Union and calling it an evil empire, which it is."
L: "Don't go off on one of your right-wing binges again, it's old, it's boring and it makes us sound like a couple of radicals."
R: "Well, I have some other column ideas."
L: "Shoot.'
R: "Wasteful Congressional trips."
L: "Too complicated, plus all those statistics. Forget it."
R: "Here's an article by William F Buckley Jr. on how there's so much information every day that we'll never even get close to absorbing even a fraction of it."
L. "Buckley? Are you kidding? I read that article the same time you did. It's way too intellectual. Don't you have anything on MTV or 'The Cosby Show'"
R: "The closest things I've got are greek or Yuppie stereotypes or old Ronald Reagan movies."
L: "Don't you have anything that's noncontroversial?"
R: "We've talked about this before. We agreed that humor and mellow stuff just doesn't go over with this University. We've got to find an axe to grind."
L: "But do we always have to be so critical?"
R: "Look. This is journalism. We don't care if we hurt some people's feelings or not. That doesn't concern us. And if somebody tries to sue us, well, we'll just hide behind the First Amendment and scream censorship."
L: "Gosh. Thanks for reminding me. I almost lost control of myself. It kind of reminds me of the '50s and '60s when the press was concerned about civil rights for blacks, yet hired few blacks. Kind of makes in hypocrites doesn't it?"
R: "That's the nature of beast."
L: "Since we're having trouble deciding what to write about, let's do one on how we decide to write a column."
R: "That's a real good idea. But if it doesn't work out, we can always do one on old Ronald Reagan movies."
And there you have it. The mind of a columnist is one of hypocrisy and confusion. Of right vs. left, of up vs. down. Still, after the dust has settled, a seemingly coherent column appears.
The mind of a columnist will never be fully understood.
But the words of George Santayana just may explain the intricate workings of a columnist's mind.
"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle or by a blunt weapon."
Mailbox
Echoes of past
It was good to see staff columnist Tim Erickson applaud himself in print for his religious beliefs. Whether what he espouses is true Christianity or not, I don't know, but it does sound a lot like traditional Christianity.
As part of ancient Christian tradition, dating back to the third century but perfected during the religious wars of the 17th century, the first thing a true Christian does is accuse everybody else of not being "really Christian" as Erickson does.
Presumably, if Erickson had been lucky enough to live in the 17th century, he'd conclude by calling
everyone who didn't share his brand of Christianity a "heretic."
B. D. Cru
By the way, as regards Erickson's claim that Prince can't be a true Christian, I've yet to find the New Testament passage in which Jesus condemns oral sex.
Offense unintended
xx, Philippines junior
I would like to address some of the problems raised by Karen Schmidt and Timothy Cooper in the letter concerning the April 4 anti-apartheid rally in front of Strong Hall (Kansan, April 9).
Unfortunately, sometimes an opportunist will show up at these rallies and will say or do things that do not
I have been a member of the KU Committee on South Africa for about a year now. KUSA has always been committed to education and discussion concerning South Africa. Most of us do not intend to force our ideas down anybody's throat. Our aim has been to raise awareness on the issue.
KUSA also has been committed to an open forum. With this in mind, the organizers of the April 4 rally decided to allow an open forum where any speaker could share his or her thoughts with the audience. An open forum allows a speaker with any viewpoint to speak.
reflect the feelings of the group (this
important Seing from Kansas City)
opportunities (being from Kansas City)
I regret if any of the speakers offended anyone on Wescoe Beach. Many of us realized that we had supporters on the other side of the street and we thank them for listening.
We also did not intend for the rally to become a shouting match at people on Wesco Beach. Some problems will occur with a rally being organized in a short period of time.
I would strongly encourage anyone interested in South Africa to attend future rallies and to feel free to participate in an open forum where anyone can speak his or her mind without the threat of censorship.
Charles Munson
Charles Muns
Leawood inaiol