4
Friday, April 5, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Children go hungry
Lawmakers, voters should remember the poor and focus on nation's domestic hunger problems
M more than 5 million hungry U.S. children are begging for someone to hear their pleas.
Under-represented and lacking political power, the children are yet another item to add to the list of what the nation has forgotten to tend to.
The wealthiest nation in the world has been left desensitized by the Reagan-era legacy and has chosen not to address the problem of domestic hunger.
The Food Research and Action Center conducted a survey that represents the most comprehensive and thorough study ever made on hunger in the United States.
The Reagan administration dictated that the poor chose to be poor.
For these families, particularly for the children in these families, their was no choice involved in their plight.
Poor families are spending a large portion of their incomes on housing. So little of their paychecks is left that when it comes time to
It seems that until it becomes socially correct to act in favor of the silent group, they will continue to suffer.
buy food there simply is not enough money left to feed their children adequately.
Even in Kansas, the breadbasket state, one out of 10 children does not get enough to eat.
She said that pumping more money to
Sen.ancy Kassenbaum said so much that the welfare delivery system was a failure.
"We simply are not coordinating our efforts" ,she said.
But what the senator and other lawmakers have forgotten to suggest is what would solve the problem
Attention has been focused on international issues long enough. Lawmakers, and more importantly, voters, must turn to what has been nected on the homefront.
We cannot afford to alienate yet another part of our society.
Tiffany Harness for the editorial board
Minimum wage
Increased pay provides fairer distribution
The increase in the minimum wage Monday from $3.80 to $4.25 marks the second stage of a long overdue effort
second stage of a long overdue effort the first in nearly a decade to mandate a decent standard of living for working Americans.
About 3 million U.S. citizens earn the minimum wage. To full-time minimum-wage employees, the increase means a raise of about $18 a week. However, their $8,500 annual income still will be about $1,400 less than the poverty level for a family of three.
The minimum wage was designed to help prevent exploitative employment. The current minimum wage does not go far enough toward that goal. Individuals who spend one-third of their adult lives at a job deserve to earn at least enough to survive without relying on handouts.
Labor organizations have called for a minimum wage of $7.75 an hour by April 1994, which would raise it to its historical level of about half the average hourly wage.
Textbook economics argue against the minimum wage. In theory, the minimum wage limits international competitiveness and employment opportunities for unskilled labor, which might be displaced by the cost of higher wages.
However, empirical evidence for these assertions is slim.
Traditionally, the U.S. economy has maintained enough elasticity to offset effects that
might be seen in a "model" system.
Even if a few businesses faced bankruptcy because of a higher minimum wage, companies that cannot provide a living wage for their workers are of dubious value.
While some of the costs may be passed on to consumers, which could fuel inflation, current economic conditions make it more likely that management will absorb some of the expense of the higher wages. This mild redistribution would help alleviate inequities inherent in the management-labor relationship.
Besides its fundamental fairness, the minimum wage has other benefits.
Wage-led growth has been the secret of the U.S. economy for more than 200 years.
Workers' ability to migrate to the frontier and limited supplies of labor kept U.S. wages unusually high. High wages led companies to improve productivity and technology. On the demand side, well-paid workers formed a stable domestic market.
Higher wages produce better living standards and less reliance on an unpredictable world market. The richer countries of Western Europe, such as Germany, also successfully have followed this model.
Chris Siron for the editorial board
University Daily Kansan
AIRBUS 311 TO TOWER-
THEIR DEMANDS ARE
AS FOLLOWS - THEY
WANT TO GO TO PAKISTAN
OR ANYPLACE WITHOUT
KOALA BEARS, THEY
WANT ALL ANIMALS
IN ZOO'S TO BE FEED
- PARTICULARLY
MARSUPIALS, AND
THEY WANT MARLON
BRANDO TO MEET
THEM WHEN THEY
LAND AND DO THE
"STELLA" THING.
THEY HAVE WEAPONS,
BUT THEY SEEM
FAIRLY DOICE. OF
COURSE THEY'RE
KANGAROOS, SO IT'S
HARD TO TELL...
Religion responsibility
Ed Killen's sermantic article in Tuesday's Kansan, in which he thinks he has proven the empirical factuality of the Resurrection, is only frighteningly clear evidence that some KU students are capable of living in the 20th century while at the same time feeling comfortable in merely repeating the same old irrational clap-trap and subjectively based nonsense that they've picked up from their local bibliolatrous, fundamentalist gurus.
The only evidence he presents is that he has a naive understanding of the breadth and rich complexity of human psychological and religious experience and a total ignorance of the nature of history and history writing.
pletes his formal education that he take a basic course in logic (such as Introduction to Logic) and that he would begin to take some personal responsibility by being courageous and human enough to think his own thoughts, rather than merely recycle those ideas that were jammed into your brain, for example in superstition. Such people are in danger of becoming robots for those who will use them for their own economic and political ends.
I would hope that before he com-
Paul Allen Mincolne Assistant professor religious studies
Paul Allen Mireck
People of not-so-average height find world isn't always friendly
Why is today's world designed to accommodate people who range in height from 5-foot-5 to 6-foot-27.
I am 5 feet tall with my shoes on and frankly, I am sick and tired of having to climb on cabinets to get a glass. If I did not have a roommate who is 9, the top row of my cabinets would have seen anything but dust.
But cabinets are a very minor part of the discrimination against people of unusual height.
Another example of this prejudice is found in the height of the peephole in my apartment. Now I know that a lot of basketball players live in my apartment complex, but give me a break! It's much easier for them to bend over a little than it is for me to somehow levitate in mid-air long enough to catch a glimpse of whoever's outside. But apparently that's too much to ask, so I will continue to just drag a chair over there, climb up and look out, and then drag it away. Or, if I'm feeling particularly adventurous and I have my tennis shoes on,
I can put one foot on the walls on either side of the door and attempt to balance long enough to see whoever is outside. So far, however, this has not worked. But it is rather fun to try.
Melissa Butler
Staff columnist
Probably the most irritating disadvantage of being short arises when I board a crowded bus. If the bus is so full that I have to stand in the front section of the aisle, myself and everyone around me is in for a long and bumpy ride. You see, I can't stand on my tiptoes, standing on my tiptoes, which isn't the easiest position to stand balanced. So each time the bus starts and stops I'm thrown back and forth. Needless to say, the other passengers
really appreciate this. Generally, I just try to catch an early bus.
Now I realize that there's another side to this coin. There are some great advantages to being very short. For one thing I always have plenty of leg room, no matter what size the car is. And with a nice seat in the aisle seat on an airplane. Not to mention the ability to get through a crowd quickly and easily.
I guess it would be nice if the people that designed things such as buses and peepholes would take height into consideration a little more. Maybe then I wouldn't have to the olderwoman to see who's at the door.
- Melissa Butler is a Humbolt freshman majoring in theater.
Emir likes using quick divorce to end day-old marriages
Despite my better instincts, I am becoming a big fan of the oir of Kuwait. The price
emir of Kuwait. The spice old fellow really knows how to live. He's sort of the Hugh Hefner of the Hugh Hefner except on a much grander scale.
The emir didn't return to his wartown country until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had restored one of their major palaces to its former odorence.
So now that he's back in his palace,
what is Kuwait's ruler doing? Is he
leading, ruling, using his wisdom to
Only when new furniture had arrived, gold-plated toilet fixtures were restored, the air conditioners were humming and the gigantic indoor waterfall bubbled the emir join his fellow Kuwaitis, most of whom are still enduring shortages of electricity, food and other essentials.
Mike
Royko
Syndicated
columnist
No, he's out of sight and probably looking to have a good time, according to a prominent Kuwaiti merchant quoted in The New York Times.
guide his war-weary people through their troubled times?
"All the emir does is get married," the merchant said.
As the story explains, under Islamic law the emir can have four wives.
By that, he meant that for many years the emir's main interest has been young maidens.
Ah, but he is a sly emir. He has only three wives who are his permanent
spouses. (It is said that they live splendidly. After all, the billionaire sheik is no cheapskate.)
So that leaves a vacancy for one wife. And that's the emir's loophole.
As the Times story says, "At regular intervals — sometimes weekly — Jaber is said to marry a young virgin night — only to divorce on Friday."
Obviously, the emir couldn't do that if every time he got married and divorced he had to hire a lawyer and a private detective and go to court to testify: "Your honor, she has been carrying on shamelessly with a rock musician, and I have the photographs to prove it."
But under Kuwait's law, all he has to do is get up on Friday morning, yawn, scratch, have a gulp of coffee and say, "I'll leave you, I divorce you." That's it he
says it three times, and the one-day marriage is kaput.
It's perfectly legal, although some Arabs say it really isn't sporting. "He's following the letter of the law in France," he said to a Chicago Arab-American told me.
The Chicago, who has studied the emir's exploits, said there was no shortage of young maidens for she to skefie to魔。他 said some come from the Bedouins, the nomadic tribes that wander the desert and don't have much property that they can't load on a camel. Others are from Kuwaiti families that want to improve their standard of living.
"The virgin brides get money, goods and gifts. I'm not sure if their families get in on the graft as well, but I suspect some do."
"Future marital prospects are not affected for these young women. A
legally divorced woman can marry again, so her reputation is not tarnished.
"Some of these girls and their families consider this a great honor. They might hope that they will be seated as the permanent fourteenth."
Fat chance. At 65, with years of experience at this sort of thing, it's unlikely that the emir would over-sleep or wake up with a hangover and forget to say those three magic words three times.
I'm sure that there are some prudes who are offended by the emir's lifestyle. But look at it from his perspective. If you've seen his picture, you know that he has a long honker, an unsightly machette and the general appearance of a basset hound.
Nature didn't make him a Warren
Beatty. So he makes do with what he has, which is all a guy can do. And what the emir has, even after the war, are all those billions of gallons of untapped oil under his many nails.
If most men were honest — especially those with droopy faces — they'd admit that if they happened to be born a billionaire she, they'd be terrified. So it is allusions to turn the pretty heads of some impressionable young things.
Who knows? It's possible that the emir has been influenced by U.S. culture. Back in the 1960s, he was a student of John R. Hume on a popular slogan, from those days.
Remember it? "Make love, not war." He's just an aging flower child.
Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist with the Chicago Tribune.
CHRIS SIRON Editor
KANSAN STAFF
RICH CORNELL Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
Editors
News Melanie Mathetr
Editorial Tiffany Harness
Planning Holly M. Neuman
Campus Jennifer Reynolds,
Pam Solner
Sports Ann Sommerman
Photography Keith Thorpe
Graphics Melissa Unterberg
Features Jill Harrington
Campus sales mgr . Sophia Wehbe
Regional sales mgr . Carmen Dresch
National sales mgr . Jennifer Claxton
Sales mgr. Richard Hargbarger
Production mgrs . Rich Harbarger,
AUDRA LANGFORD
Business manager
MINDI LUND
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing advise
Business staff
Marketing director    Gail Einbinder
Creative director    Christy Haha
Classified manager    Kim Crowder
Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Kansas can also type their letters.
Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed.
The Krasan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Krasan newsroom, 111 Staffer Flint Hall.
Loco Locals
UH. MR KIBDAL WOLPERMUT...
I'M LOOK'N FOR YOUR
"AFFORDABLE FER ALL
MOUNTAIN BLUE... ITSPITS
AND GROUNDS WHEN YOU CLOUM
THE TOUGH TERRI AIM!"
SO WHAT'S "AFFORDABLE?"
by Tom Michaud
MEHR0©P9W 1K
4