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Thursday, February 19, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Keep priorities straight
For whom is Student Senate working, anyway?
The Student Senate Elections Committee proposed a bill last week that would establish a consultation salary for the present student body president and vice president. The salary, half of what the president and vice president earn a month, would cover the transition period at the end of their term.
As recently as November, top Senate officials got a $125 salary increase. While the rest of the University is suffering the effects of budget cuts, it is incomprehensible that a committee is seriously considering wasting money for a consultation fee in addition to the recent salary increases? This is one of the most ludicrous proposals to come out of the Senate in years.
Senate officials were elected to provide leadership and work for the students of this University, not to collect as much money as they can in a semester period. They are not the only people on this campus who claim to be overworked and underpaid.
Apparently, the Student Senate has adopted an attitude of thinking of its own needs before those of the students it is supposed to be working for.
If the student senators would use their heads, they would realize that the best way to learn a new position is on-the-job training. The overlap period goes from the middle of April until May 15. How much more consultation and help do officers think they can provide their successors with pay than without? If new officers need assistance, old officers should provide it for the welfare of the student body, not for compensation involved.
The Student Senate and its committees would be wise to forget this and any future self-indulgent proposals and concentrate on the students for a change.
Supply and demand
Supply and demand economists couldn't have written it any better.
KU basketball fans demand tickets, scalpers supply them.
This would be a useless piece of legislation because it wouldn't prevent scalping. Missouri already has such a law, yet scalpers still are plenitful at nearly all concerts and athletic events.
Scalpers should be allowed to do business as long as they don't interfere with anyone or anything. University police have said scalpers haven't caused problems and won't as long as they don't interfere with traffic.
Winter said KU students should be protected from
scalping at the field house because they paid tuition and the Javhawks were their team.
This is an irrational argument because nobody is forcing the students, or anyone else, to pay the scalpers' prices. But if they are willing to pay for the tickets, why shouldn't the scalpers profit? It is a business.
Scalpers can make money if they are willing to work at it. Some scalpers reportedly have made up to $20,000 in just four World Series games. KU games will not make scalpers rich, but Jayhawk basketball is a commodity in hot demand, and scalpers should be allowed to meet that demand.
The Kansas Legislature has enough items on its agenda without having to worry about scalping. It will only be a waste of time to pass a law that is unnecessary and unenforceable.
A grave topic
Last week, Lt. Gov. Jack Walker announced the formation of a task force to study the risk of AIDS in Kansas. The task force has an opportunity to perform an important function in formulating a plan on how the state should handle the deadly disease and develop an educational program. But the group needs to be careful not to waste money on planning that might be better spent on financing AIDS educational programs.
Walker said he hoped to organize a high-profile, prestigious board of about 10 members. The board will "try to come to grips with the delicate problem of educating the public in the area of prevention" and will report its findings to
The problem of the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome deserves immediate attention from the state. Since there is no sign of a cure for the disease, all local energy should be channeled toward helping comfort those with the disease and trying to stop its spread through education.
the 1988 Legislature.
The board will be a success if it works toward speeding up these goals. But if it merely serves as a prestigious gathering of people for the purpose of grandstanding and petty bickering, it will be worse than a failure. It will be responsible for lives that could have been saved with a quick, decisive policy.
News staff
News staff
Frank Hansel ... Editor
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Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
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Bonnie Hardy ... Ad director
Denise Stephens ... Retail sales manager
Kevin Scherer ... Campus sales manager
Duncan Calhoun ... Marketing manager
Lori Copple ... Classified manager
Jennifer Lumianski ... Production manager
David Nixon ... National sales manager
Jeanne Hines ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Opinions
Arrest won't end reign of drug lords
Just when drug-trafficking was reaching its highest point in history, it suffered a serious setback when Carlos Lehder Rivas, one of the most powerful and dangerous cocaine drug lords, was captured by the Colombian police and immediately
Carlos Chuquin Columnist
extradited to the United States. He faces charges of smuggling 3,000 kilo of cocaine into the United States and be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Can Lehder's capture jeopardize the $130 billion-a-year U.S. drug market? Are we going to expect more assassination attempts against prominent people? Can we say that Lehder's capture is a step forward for better U.S.-Latin American relations?
In recent years, the abuse and control of narcotics have emerged from the shadows to jeopardize U.S.
Latin American relations. It is said that Latin American countries supply one-third of the heroin, perhaps 80 percent of the marijuana and all of the cocaine currently used in the United States. This represents three-fourths of a U.S. drug market estimated at up to $100 billion.
In 1979, the United States and Colombia signed an extradition treaty, which basically stated that a criminal, Lehder in this case, wanted in the United States would be sent to face justice. Many Colombians denounced their treaty as a direct threat to their security, and think that Colombia should neither practice nor allow the surrender of its nationals to foreign justice.
dealers offered then Colombian President Belisario Betancur a deal: Drop charges and extradition orders, and the drug czars would give up smuggling and bring enough assets into the country to help pay off Colombia's foreign debt.
Despite this treaty, the drug traffickers proved to the world how powerful and influential they are in Colombia and Bolivia. In Colombia, Pablo Escobar, an infamous drug trafficker, was elected in 1892 as an altender of the lower house of Congress He was regained by President Robin Hood, having provided education, housing and even a public zoo for the people of Medellin.
A similar situation occurred in Bolivia. In 1983, Bolivian President Hernan Siles Zuazo's drug adviser secretly met with Roberto Suarez Gomez, "the godfather of the Bolivian coke."
In 1984, Escobar and other drug
Suarez claimed in an open letter later published in the La Paz daily newspaper "El Diario," to have offered the Bolivian government a $2 billion loan to "strengthen the democratic process" — probably in return for a free hand in pursuing his business.
Also, the cocaine mafia exercises de facto political and military control over vast areas of Bolivia and Colombia.
Suarez claimed to have more highly advanced weapons than the Bolivian armed forces or police — including Harrier jets and missiles. In 1983 he said he could "practically destroy the Bolivian air force in one minute."
These are few examples of how strong are the cocaine mafia. Despite Lehder's imprisonment in Florida, the United States and most of the Latin American countries are far behind in demolishing the drug-traffickers.
The United States should provide the Latin American governments with assistance in controlling the drug mafia. Control depends on the quality of political institutions as opposed to physical presence. These institutions include police, weapons, communications systems, transport and support services.
But the main point in the war of drugs will be the attitude of the Latin American people. Despite some changes, they still view drug enforcement as an imposition and as a diversion of resources from more pressing needs.
The importance of Lehder's capture remains to be seen. Regardless, the government of the United States must realize that it will have to expend much more energy and resources, both here and in Latin America, if it is to stem the flow of drugs into this country.
Talk of reform not new to Soviet Union
It happens every time. Let us Soviet bosses relax the reins a little on the workers, or on the writers, or on any other aspect of life in that big gulag, and Western observers are going to describe this old tactic as some kind of revolutionary change *Celestine Bohlen of the Washington Post* led the chorus not long ago when she began her dispatch from Moscow:
Paul Greenberg
Columnist
"The Soviet Union yesterday enacted a law that for the first time will allow limited private enterprise in a variety of services, such as shoe repair, taxi driving and small-scale construction and agriculture. . ."
Well, not exactly for the first time. By May 1921, the Bolsheviks had succeeded in destroying the economy within only four years and were busy papering over the ruins with millions of rubles fresh off the printing press, the one commodity they could produce in plentiful supply. That's when Comrade Lenin instituted what he called his New Economic Policy. The NEP of 1921 was not entirely different from the program Comrade Gorbachev has just
announced: Small private businesses were allowed in the cities. Small plants were returned to their owners and permission granted to start private enterprises. Peasants were allowed to barter their grain for goods instead of worthless paper.
Of course it was never acknowledged that the regime was adopting a capitalist solution to its problems, the New Economic Policy was described officially as a "temporary retreat from communism made necessary for purposes of economic reconstruction," or some such Newspast. The Newspast hasn't changed, either. Ivan Gladky, chairman of the State Committee for Labor and Social Issues, is quoted in Bohlen's dispatch as saying of today's policy: "It is obvious that the new law does not mean a return to private enterprise." Uh uh. Whenever a Communist functionary begins a statement, "It is obvious . . ." odds are it ain't.
This is not to say that the Soviet regime is turning to free enterprise voluntarily; it would never do anything so practical short of desperation. In the spring of 1921, food was scarce and growing scarcer. The Soviet Union's first man-made famine was in the offing, thanks to the sort of economic planning that still haunts Soviet agriculture. Some three million people would die in the winter of
Perhaps the most widespread myth about the Soviet system is that, however miserable its people are now, at least they are better off than under the czars. That myth may be so widespread because it is not unexamined. It relegates to the memory hole the bourne agriculture and developing industry of
1921-22, a modest number compared to what Comrade Stalin wrought later but still an impressive beginning. For the first time, the Soviet Union, which was once called the breadbasket of Europe, would import grain from the United States. Thus began a practice that, after 60 years of Soviet agriculture, has become the confluent part of the communism has done for Soviet farmers, it's been a boon to U.S. ones.
czarist Russia before it was struck by twin disasters, the First World War and communism, one of which continues to this day.
Before the First World War, Russia exported twice as much grain as this country did; it supplied almost a third of the total world market. Peter Drucker, writing in "The Age of Discontinuity," figured that an economist back in 1913 could have extrapolated the data from that year and accurately forecast pretty much where the economy of the world's nations would be today, except for the utter collapse of Russian agriculture. Now that was a truly revolutionary development.
This new New Economic Policy, like the old one, isn't so much an abstract reform as a desperate move. To quote Harvard's Richard Pipes, "The Soviet citizen today is poor not only in comparison with his counterpart in other European countries. In terms of essentials — food, clothing and housing — the Soviet population as a whole is worse off than it was before the Revolution and in the 1920s. If one considers such intangibles as access to information and the right to travel as elements of the standard of living — as they should be — the Soviet citizenry is positively destitute."
Once again, as in 1921, the Soviets are calling a temporary retreat from communism. Like the first one, this new economic policy consists not so much of introducing novel reforms as of legalizing a free market that already exists illegally. This underground economy is what keeps the country's legal economy functioning even at the low level it does.
Emergent capitalism in the Soviet Union operates very much as it did in the Middle Ages. It was always there to some extent, but it surfaced legally only when the laws of church and state — which dictated prices, forbade interest and generally outlawed economic reality — grew untenable.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed