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Wednesday, March 21, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Crafty campaign
Tobacco company goes beyond ethics, rights with campaign tactics against proposed tax bill
Behind an elaborate smoke screen, a tobacco company apparently has organized a letter-writing campaign in opposition to a proposed cigarette tax that would benefit higher education.
Members of the Kansas House of Representatives recently received letters, ostensibly from constituents, expressing opposition to a bill that would raise the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 5 cents. The bill, proposed by State Sen. Dick Bond, R-Overland Park, would raise about $11.8 million, which would finance Margin of Excellence programs. The bill now is before the House Taxation Committee.
House members have received handwritten letters expressing disapproval of the bill, but lawmakers think Philip Morris Inc., a cigarette manufacturer, is behind the campaign. Although the letters were on different colors and sizes of paper and were both handwritten and typed, they all contained the same anti-cigarette tax theme.
The scheme was revealed when a legislator received an envelope that contained a package of material, including a postcard from Philip Morris, asking whether the pre-written letter
The campaign is a deviously crafted lobby strategy. It is also reprehensible.
The company has willfully decided to try to mislead Kansas lawmakers by disguising its letter-writing campaign as the concerns of individual constituents. Philip Morris has every right to express its opinion to legislators. It does not have the right to attempt to influence legislators by passing off its opinion as the individual concerns of many constituents.
had been copied and sent to a legislator. Philip Morris denies orchestrating the campaign and says it only provides information to people who request it. Evidence suggests otherwise.
Lawmakers rely on voters' opinions to make decisions on issues facing the state. They also should listen to the concerns of industry and business, but their main responsibility is to the voters and taxpayers. Philip Morris is trying to manipulate legislators by disguising its concern as the opinion of a majority of voters. Legitimate concerns must be heard; corporate posturing can be ignored.
Daniel Niemi for the editorial board
Biodegradable plastics
Emphasis should be on recycling, not disposing
Plastics manufacturers lately are resembling the stereotypical used car salesman in a plaid polyester suit and white wingtip shoes who says, "Trust me" as he sells you a used car.
When the car's doors and bumpers fall off as you round the first corner, you realize you've been had. But by then, the salesman has forbidden his promise and the damage is done.
When the new wave of biodegradable and photodegradable plastic trash bags and disposable diapers hit the market, they were touted as a solution to the increasingly well-known solid waste problem and the tendency of plastic to last for hundreds of years. Manufacturers played on the spreading environmental fears to sell their products. "Trust me," they seemed to be saying. "If you use this degradable product, you will be saving our environment." The bumpers are falling off of that line already.
Environmentalists doubt the manufacturers' claims that the new breed of plastic produced with a cornstarch-based resin will break down in landfills. They point as proof to studies in which researchers have found readable, 40-
year-old newspapers in landfills.
Some question what happens to the chemicals used in the manufacture of the bags as they degrade. Are these dangerous toxins released into the soil and water?
Others point to the fact that biodegradable disposable diapers don't address the issue of raw sewage in the landfill.
But the biggest argument against degradables is that they fail to address the issue of reduction of the amount of waste that is generated in the first place. Some have said that these products may lull our throwaway society into continuing its reliance on disposable products. After all, here is a convenient item that saves the environment every time we throw it away.
We all must be willing to sacrifice convenience to save the environment. We must recycle. We must think twice about purchasing plastics. We must reduce our solid waste output. Not everything we use can be disposable. Because there is no quick fix. We can't buy a rejuvenated environment at the local market.
Richard Brack for the editorial board
Rolling Stones target geezers
Well, they finally got me. I managed to resist
VV I managed to resist buying tickets to any of the Rolling Stones' concerts last year, and I definitely managed to resist buying any of the band's lapping-in performances in the parishal. I didn't buy the "Steel Wheels" album and I skipped the pay-per-view TV show.
But last weekend, walking through a mall, I saw that the Rolling Stones' band bedecked — a history of the band — was selling for $19.95. The got me.
Bob Greene
Syndicated columnist
As they knew they would. The Rolling Stones are quite aware that there are a lot of us geezers out here who no longer would feel comfortable shoehorned into a concert crowd. Hey, the Rolling Stones are geezers, too, and most of the band members probably wouldn't go to a concert if they had to stand in line and sit in the 65th row. The videotape, though, is a fascinating place where vehicle aimed at those of us who have reached the point at which we would prefer to see the Rolling Stones in our living rooms, rather than in a football stadium, with "pause" and "fast-forward" available.
Actually, it's a pretty compelling piece of work. You have to like the band before any of it means anything to you, but you wouldn't buy the tape if you didn't like the band. The first thing you notice is that Mick Jagger always has been smarter than a darn whip. You listen to him talk, and you watch him through the years, and you know that this is a man who would have succeeded in any field he chose. Every move, both onstage and in his career, was calculated. And you have to admire him for this even as you shake your head at it. Maybe
the canniest thing of all is how he managed to pretend to be unintelligent in the early days when he instinctively realized that smarts wouldn't sell. We didn't notice the artifact at the time, but on the tape it is apparent, and it's startling.
It was commerce from the start. People are aware that Brian Jones was fired from the band because of his drug use; more interesting was
Reviewers, writing about the tape, have commented on a 1964 Rolling Stones appearance on a TV show hosted by Dean Martin; Martin made fun of the band, rolling his eyes to get laughs from the audience. Some reviewers deemed this disrespectful. But they were all involved in the same game — Martin's act was that of a veteran of the high life, the Rolling Stones' act was that of a bunch of street-tough loots. Both Martin and the Rolling Stones profited handsomely from their roles; in fact, when the band had to change "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together" at the insistence of Ed Sullivan, Jagger borrowed Dean Martin's exact technique of rolling his eyes toward the ceiling (while singing the new words), as a signal to the audience. He could have walked off the show, or defied Sullivan's directive, the show was live. But he, like Martin, rolled his eyes. It was commerce.
that when the band's first manager said that Ian Stewart should be removed from the group, the Rolling Stones willingly obliged. Stewart was a founding member of the band and a close friend. But his looks were conventional, and the Rolling Stones were marketed as being scruffy and unconventional. So Stewart was offered an opportunity to meet and meet an audience. That little business alone tells you volumes. What Ian Stewart may have felt about his friends kicking him off the stage could be the stuff of novels.
The music is still good. Forget that "greatest rock-and-roll band in the world" stuff, if the Rolling Stones weren't famous, and if you walked into a bar on a Friday night and heard them playing and had no idea who they were, you'd think they were terrific, which is probably the best compliment they can be paid.
On the videotape, Charlie Watts,
the band's drummer, tries to explain
what it was like for the curtain to go
up in the early days and to hear
nothing but screams. He'd look over
at Brian Jones and wonder at the
wrissness of it all. They were
screaming for Brian. Brian —
the same Brian that Charlie had seen
five minutes before in the lavatory.
The thing left unstated on “25 x 5” is the thing that may be the most thought-provoking, if you’re inclined to such thoughts:
Being a member of the Rolling Stones for the past 25 years? My goodness, for the handful of men allowed that experience, it must have been wonderful fun.
▶ Bob Greene is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Groups distorted
I was moved to write about a Kansan editorial (March 7) linking animal rights groups with the murder of a veterinarian. First, I am not an apologist for these groups. I just want to say that smearing them in print while admitting that the accusation is just a rumor seems unfair, and that you only told one side of the story.
From what little I know (which isn't much, but that makes two of us), these groups are opposed to vixision (dissection of live animals) and experiments done on live animals. To them, right or wrong, this is comparable to what the Nazis and the Japanese military did to human beings during World War II (and the United States with atomic bombs, but that's another story).
Also, it is not clear that veterinary science is always aimed at helping animals. I bet a lot of veterinarians work for meat producers and laboratories that test chemicals for safety by putting them in the eyes of live rabbits, for example.
Concerning the spiking of trees "60 Minutes" did a piece on a group that engages in this activity. A spiker pointed out that the trees are marked with spray paint, and that the activity would be pointless if it did not prevent the trees from being cut down in the first place.
Ed Stamm Office assistant li
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Human rights overshadow U.S. policy
"T these are interesting times in which we live," one of my professors
The election of Violeta Camorro in Nicaragua presents the Bush administration with an important opportunity. Ortega's defeat represents a chance for the U.S. government to shift the emphasis of our foreign policy from anti-communism to human rights.
stociously said. We were discussing the status of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union before the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. Communism has been chased out of countries from Eastern Europe to Central America by people who are hungry for freedom and prosperity.
As evidenced by the spirit of the imperialistic Reagan Doctrine, U.S. policy toward Latin America has
The changes that have occurred throughout the world have been interesting, to say the least. They also have necessitated changes in U.S. foreign policy. Countries that were previously subject to economic exclusion and sanction are now receiving U.S. aid for the venture into democracy and free enterprise.
Dan Grossman
But this McCarthyistic foreign policy paranolia has resulted in the subordination of other important criteria, namely, human rights. Consequently, Latin American leaders and governments have received U.S. approval and aid without regard to their records on human rights.
Staff columnist
been dominated by the quest to keep communism out of our hemisphere: Ardent anti-communism has been the most important criterion for U.S. approval of Latin American governments.
Chile's General Augusto Pinochet illustrates this lapse of reason in U.S. policy well. When his predecessor, Salvador Allende, began to nationalize Chile's industries, the CIA plotted and effected his assassination. Pinochet's opposition to communist theory and doctrine won him favor
with the United States. But the dictatorship of Pinochet has become the subject of international criticism for its blatant disregard for fundamental human rights.
The government of El Salvador also serves as a good example of misplaced foreign policy priorities. Because the country is entrenched in a civil war with the guerrillas espousing leftist beliefs, the U.S. government supplies the Salvadoran government and military with $1.5 million a day. The renegade military enforces government policy by using torture, kidnapping and murder.
After Ortega began to nationalize the Nicaraguan economy and developed their own banking system, the United States revitalized Somoza's death squalls, armed them.
Before Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista regime were elected to run Nicaragua, a bloody revolution took place there to overthrow an oppressive dictator named Anastasio Somoa. Somoa's death squads quelled domestic dissent through terror and murder. He supported his death squads with money from the U.S. government that was received because he wasn't a communist.
Communion as an applied ideology is waning in significance, in our hemisphere as well as in Europe. The U.S. government no longer has the eradication of the communist threat to use as an excuse to disregard the human rights' records of potential beneficiaries. Torture, murder and political oppression have no more a place in our hemisphere than does communism. The people of Latin America have suffered too long, U.S. policy priorities must be re-examined. It is past the time that we rearrange our policy priorities to reflect the morality of our country and the world community.
named them contrasts and financed the unsuccessful revolution against the Sandinista government.
> Dan Grossman in a Denver senior
maloring in political science.
Ortega's defeat at the hands of Nicaraguan voters marks the decline in strength of the communist movement in the Western Hemisphere. The ideology's failure to take hold in Latin America presents the U.S. government with the opportunity to make up for some of the wrongs it has committed through its past policies.
CAMP UHNEELY
BY SCOTT PATTY