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Thursday, February 28, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Political ideals
Citizen initiative bills may expedite law process and reinstitute traditional sense of democracy
The House Federal and State Affairs subcommittee is considering three bills that would allow Kansas citizens to propose laws and constitutional amendments.
According to the bills, the Kansas Legislature would be required to present proposed laws to its voters if citizens collected enough signatures on a petition to qualify the bills for placement on a ballot.
These citizens'-initiative bills would return our government to a true form of democracy. In ancient times, Greek citizens met on an Athenian hillside to propose, debate and vote on laws. Because of our large population, our modern political system has eliminated that direct approach and inserted a middleman — legislatures.
State senators and representatives are elected by the people to represent the people. They work toward pleasing their constituents within the confines of a political framework. The citizens' initiative bills would allow state government to return to democratic ideals. Citizens could address issues that affect them directly, not through a third party.
The Legislature, however, must choose one of three plans, each defined by a separate bill. If the Legislature adopts the direct-access plan, the proposed law or amendment would not have to pass through the Legislature before it was placed on the ballot. If
Kansas adopts the indirect-access plan, the proposed law or amendment would need the Legislature's approval.
The proposed direct-access bill will not work. Proposed legislation requires review by a government branch to guarantee that it is constitutionally correct. It only wastes time and money to find out that it is unconstitutional after a grassroots bill is presented to the electorate on a ballot.
However, the indirect-access bill will not be effective either. The bill would actually defeat the purpose of initiative laws because it exercises the same middleman the Legislature.
A third initiative bill, proposed by State Rep. Rand Rock, D- Arkansas City, suggests a compromise: the Kansas Supreme Court would review the petition before allowing the proposed law to be placed on the ballot.
With this method, pure democracy is not abandoned. The Kansas Supreme Court acts as a safety mechanism to ensure grassroots legislation would not be in vain because the proposed law would be binding under the United States and Kansas constitutions.
The proposed initiative laws provide an intelligent and reasonable approach to actively involve citizens in government.
Jennifer Schultz for the editorial board
U.S. energy strategy
Plan should focus on conserving, not producing
The Persian Gulf War has hit Congress and President Bush hard with the
T and President Bush hard with the realization that the United States desperately needs to decrease its dependence on foreign oil. In response, they have drafted a national energy strategy that focuses on increasing domestic oil production by 3.8 million barrels a day.
This measure would influence the oil industry to open 1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil exploration, a move that environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club strongly oppose.
The strategy, it seems, is so focused on reducing the U.S. dependency on foreign oil that it fails to recognize the growing need to increase energy efficiency and conservation.
For instance, the issue of auto fuel efficiency is untouched within the policy. No
proposals are offered to encourage motorists to limit their use of gasoline or manufacturers to build more fuel-efficient cars. This omission is ludicrous given that gasoline is the largest single use for oil in the United States.
Also, there is little emphasis on increasing use of solar energy or encouraging home energy efficiency. Such measures are essential if the United States is going to reduce its overall consumption of oil.
In attempting to fix a problem that has become glaringly apparent since the beginning of the war, the administration simply has changed the components of the problem without specifically addressing it.
The U.S. dependence on foreign oil needs to be remedied, but turning the problem around to focus on domestic production is not the answer.
Melanie Matthes for the editorial board
Shaving one's five-year beard requires careful consideration
It is Feb. 23, the day after George Bush served the final eviction notice to Saddam Hussein. I stirred out of my sleeping bag on the couch in the living room, contrary to my customary, early morning half-hour of soaking of electromagnetic radiation from my Sony TV with remote control. It is 6:45 a.m. on this quiet Saturday morning, and I looked at it again. In During the seven long seconds it took to walk from the couch to the bathroom mirror, I made a monumental decision. Shave my face!
Umashanker
Sampath
Guest
columnist
I set my tools on either side of the wash basin. I grabbed my Norelco cordless electric shaver — the one that shaves without the blade even touching your skin — and proceeded to clear my facial forest of 5 years, 6 months and 20 days with the trimmer. I hate to clean the triple head razor after a shave, so I decided in favor of the plastic disposable razor. chose, you guessed it. The best a woman can choose is the which, until this moment, had the privilege to grace only the skin below my jaw. After the ritual was over I weighed 2.2 grams, about a tenth of an ounce, less. Not a bad loss for a 23-minute workout without moving your body, much less your feet.
I had not seen or felt my face this way in many years. I had decided I would not see it like this 12 years earlier I was only 4-foot-11 then, and had to convince theater ushers I was not the adult for a movie rated by the Board of Film
Censors in India for adult viewing only.
The fact that it happened in front of 20 classmates of mine on the evening after my last high school examination only strengthened my resolve. But decision has served me well. I has selected a lot of time, money and brushes.
Here are some advantages and observations I have experienced or heard about sporting a beard:
matter about **sporting a beard**
The countless hours saved could be gained in more artistic pursuits.
■ The artistic bent could be justified since most male artists are bearded.
■ You could defy your parents and they could do nothing about it until you are anesthetized, an unlikely scenario.
■ When you trim your beard every third day you are actually training for the real world (i.e. when you are older). You will have more experience to do lawns and hedges).
■ When you grow a beard you don't fertilize or spray pesticides and foul the environment.
■ You could stroke your beard and enhance your scholarly, thoughtful appearance.
'I had not seen or felt my face this way in many years. I had decided I would not see it like this 12 years earlier.'
My tcp five reasons for this early
morning decision to clean up my face despite all the enumerated advantages are:
■ After being at KU for more than five years, it offered the best and cheapest camouflage and fenced off questions such as, "Are you a professional student?" or "Have you seen the graduate of the graduate school tunnel?"
To enhance my appeal since reliable sources say women prefer bald men with a beard or head of clean shaven full head of hair. And I was neither
- No more need to prove my age in aforementioned prehistoric ways since only $10 buys a KU picture ID.
As an excuse for being late since my cordless shaver ran out of battery charge.
My Noreloce and Gillette have graduated to destinations above the jawline, but no amount of lip service will convince me than that. My moustache is off limits!
- Umashanker Sampath is a Madras, India, graduate student.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Only soldiers know war
"I am tired and sick of war. It's glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither rifle a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, because, more desolation. War is hell."
This was part of a speech given to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy, June 19, 1879, by William Tecumseh Sherman. He was Gen. Sherman's ruthless tactics that broke the back of the South in the Civil War, and he was one of the greatest soldiers our society has ever known. And I think that if Gen. Sherman were alive today, he would be sickened at the sight of these prowar activists, these papier-mache patriots whose sudden patriotic chest-bearing seems mysteriously to coincide with the disappearance of the draft threat.
I simply cannot understand these people who seem to be cheering for war as if it were a KU basketball game. Don't you realize that men your age are killing, being killed and witnessing unimaginable atrocities — just so your pampered lifestyle can be preserved? Oh, but I know what you're thinking. Those men volunteered. They knew what they were getting into 'Tell me we have a 72-year-old college education and comes from a poor family, know what he's getting into when the recruiter offers him $30,000 to go to college and asks him to sign on the dotted line?
This brings up another point. If this war is truly what our populace wants, not why not initiate the draft? Did I just sense a general crenge among the patriotic ranks? I would love to see some participation from fellow students who can go to school on Daddy's money and drive sports cars that cost enough to pay for my education five times over. It seems logical that a person who thinks his lifestyle is truly in jeopardy would welcome a draft. For some reason, however, this isn't the case. Hmm, perhaps there is some deeper patriotic motivation that I'm failing to
maybe they're afraid that if they go to war the flag-burners will gain the upper hand, pot will be legalized in the kitchen and into shambles. But I doubt it.
For those of you who are calling me a hippie or a communist at this point, there is one last thing you should know. I am a soldier. I'm not afraid to fight or die in battle, and I'm not protesting the war. Nor am I addressing those of you who have friends or family in the war yet continue to be patriotic. Specifically, we are also protecting patrons who have nothing to lose in this war, and especially those hypocritical cowards who can somehow cry out against the draft and yell "kick Iraq's" butt" all in one breath. From now on just keep your mouth shut. You make the true patriots look bad, and you profane the dignity and bravery of the American soldier.
Matt Litton Lawrence sophomore
may not be appealing to Palmer. I should remind him that he do not have a litmus test for acceptable behaviors from clients in order to gain American Civil Liberties Union support.
Personally, I find many of our clients totally revolting and not the kind of people I would want to have for dinner at my home.
Nevertheless, I feel so strongly about the First Amendment that I would defend the rights of the Klan, and even Palmer, to speak their will. It is an embarrassment to the ACLU that we have to defend the scum of the earth, but it is a sad fact that the Klan has been in financial finances to assert their civil rights. The poor and advocates of less-popular causes must turn to the ACLU.
Although we might never alter Palmer's vision of the world, rest assured that we will, in the words of Descartes, "defend to the death your right to speak your mind."
ACLU must defend all
I would like to respond to Stan Palmer's letter in the Feb. 21 Kansan. Although many of our clients
Steve Lopes
Vice president, Kansas ACLU
A strong argument has been made that environmentalism must make economic sense to work. Cases in point are products being developed in the South American rain forest.
Other Voices
National Geographic magazine reports that ivory-like tagua nuts harvested in the jungles of Ecuador can be part in preserving those forests.
Environmental nuts
Two U.S. clothing companies reportedly are buying hundreds of thousands of cream-colored buttons made from the jungle nut. Villagers who harvest the tagua nut hope to turn a profit and demonstrate that rain forests are more valuable standing than cut for lumber. The rock-hard nuts also offer a substitute for ivory, now banned from international trade.
So far, though, it's been more economical for local people there to cut the forests for lumber and to clear land for livestock. But viable
economic incentives like tagua nuts might be what it will take to make it more profitable to leave trees standing.
■ From the Enterprise-Journal,
From the Enterprise-Journal, McComb, Miss.
Energy consumption
Secretary of Energy James Watkins deserves credit for much that is sound in the national debate. Bush administration released . . .
If Secretary Watkins' vision had prevailed into the strategy's final draft, we'd be cheering. Unfortunately, some of our best ideas, especially those dealing with energy conservation and efficiency, seem to have been given the heave-to by White House skeptics, including Chief of Staff John Sunum.
The plan's principal thrust is to boost oil production while doing little to foster conservation, and this is a major flaw.
From the Journal-Bulletin, Providence, R J
KANSAN STAFF
CHRIS SIRON
Editor
RICH CORNELL Managing editor
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