friday, October 27, 1978
page 4
daily nebraskan
opinioneditorial
'Lid' disaster for education
Perhaps the most publicized issue
on the November ballot is Proposi
tion 302, the proposal to place a five
percent limit on local government
spending.
The leaders of the movement to
approve the proposition have capit
alized on a national anti-tax anti
government mood to launch their
attack on the most efficient and in
many ways most necessary units of
government.
Their five percent limit is neither
workable nor realistic.
The limit applies to all aspects of
local government, including utilities,
and does not even keep pace with
inflation, leading to decreased service
from local governmental units in
charge of essential services such as
street and sewer construction and
maintenance and citizen protection.
The limit will make it virtually
impossible for small, rural communi
ties to make major purchases, such as
new fire trucks, police equipment
and other expensive machinery.
But most important, the limit will
have a devastating impact on educa
tion. The lid makes it impossible for
school boards and administrators to
continue to operate programs and
services at the present level and
leaves no opportunity for improve
ment. The cuts necessary to comply
with the limit eventually will damage
educational quality in our public
schools and place the responsibility
for properly preparing students for
higher education on the institutions
of higher education themselves.
And in this day of tight budgets,
the institutions of higher learning
cannot afford this additional burden.
Proposition 302 is a bad idea. It is
impractical and damages the schools
and lessens citizen protection.
Its approval would be a sad day in
Nebraska history for years to come.
Bottle bill
Proposition 301 will help keep
Nebraska clean and free of litter.
Many people may not want to pay
a five cent deposit on beer and pop
containers. But individuals must
realize they will pay to clean up the
environment regardless of whether
the bill passes.
The deposit will act as an incen
tive to return beverage containers.
Passage of the bottle bill also will
conserve energy and raw materials.
Opponents of the bill have poured
huge sums of money into advertising
campaigns.
The bulk of the money has come
from industries outside the state to
try to stop the bill's passage.
Opponents say the solution to the
problem is a comprehensive litter
plan which would put a litter tax on
industries that produce litter, such as
bottles, cans, paper and grocery pro
ducts. But consumers will pay for this
tax, because prices for products will
increase if this happens. Even con
sumers who do not litter will be
taxed.
Vote yes on the bottle bill to have
a choice in the matter, get your
money back and keep litter out of
Nebraska.
Present thoughts on time past
while awav the column task
Opinion by Kate Gaul
Time ('tim)-the measured or measura
ble period during which an action, process,
or condition exists or continues; a
continuim which lacks spatial dimensions
and in which events succeed one another
from past through present to future. -Webster's.
Having discovered that I have no time to
write a coherent column this week, I natu
rally decided to fill space with its concept.
Time is something everyone wishes they
had more of. Time is something which no
one can halt and which the effects of, once
they have occurred, are irreversable. Time
is the cause of much frustration-Gaul.
The keeping of time began with the
keeping of pets and plants-agriculture and
animal husbandry and the increase in tech
nology that these innovations foretold. I
suppose it would be easy to blame the
ancient Babylonians and Egyptians for the
woes that time brought.
trf
cut. ftttes.miHH,
. f-i :rz 1 1
i nun
prrr
IR 7r y
IXdertuties I C su- 1 r 90113 feu.!
The study of time began sanely enough.
Ancient Babylonian and Egyptian priests
studies the movement of the stars and
planets because their reglions taught them
that the gods, who carried the fiery orbs
through the heavens, controlled human
destiny. Astutely they noted that the
moon reliably passed through a series of
phases.
The Egyptian priests cleverly noted the
movements of the Dog Star Sirius, the
brightest star on the evening sky. When
Sirius vanished from the evening sky and
then reappeared later, briefly visible as it
rose with the sun, the patient priests noted
that its reappearance in the eastern sky
corresponded with the annual Nile flood
an important time for Egyptians. The time
that they observed to have elapsed was 365
days. The year was born about 4,242 BC.
Still killing time. . .
But time exists mainly as a mental con
cept. Time is a great teacher, a great healer,
a great legalizer and a great leveler. Time is
a commodity that can be saved or lost, it
can be spent (time is money) or wasted.
And, pleasurably, we can beat it or kill it.
Time is elusive. We spend half our lives
(probably the better half) trying to reverse
its effects.
Everywhere we go a clock ticks away
our moments; it is often somewhere on our
body, reminding us that there is never
enough of it in the good times, and always
too much in the bad.
Have you ever (morbidly perhaps)
thought that this moment of your life is
unique and will never come again?
Time is precious. It gives continuity and
joy but also brings sadness and death. Even
the stars shift with time, and mountains
move.
Federal careers alleged ruined by psychiatric tests
WASHINGTON-According to Washing
ton folklore, presidents are but small dogs
wagged by a giant bureaucratic tail. But to
the surprise of the political pros, President
Carter won his first battle with the bureau
cracy. He pushed through unwanted civil
service reforms.
This should help him get a handle on
the bureaucracy. But our sources believe he
would have done better by cleaning out the
Civil Service Commission. He has a secret
report in his files which tells of civil service
violations. The report includes names and
details.
jack anderson
The most disturbing practice we have
discovered in the federal system was
borrowed from the Soviets. We have invest
igated reports that government officials
have tried to ruin the careers of stubborn
subordinates by ordering them to take
psychiatric fitness-for-duty examinations.
The subordinates can be required to sub
mit to psychological examinations. If they
agree, the tests may be stacked against
them. If they refuse, they can be fired .
We have written about this naty
practice in the past. Now. a House sub
committee, led by Rep. Gladys Spellrr.an.
D-Md., has documented the story. The
report has not been released, but we have
had access to it. So far as we know, this
will be the first official acknowledgement
that the U.S. government has used the
Soviet tactic of branding dissidents as
mental cases.
The Spellman report alleges that in
voluntary psychiatric examinations have
been misused to punish . unpopular
employees. This has happened, according
to the report, on a significant number of
occasions.
In 80 percent of these cases, the
immediate supervisor decided which
employees needed psychiatric examina
tions, even though the supervisors had no
medical expertise.
The report also states that the
employees have no right to examine the re
sults of their own psychiatric examina
tions. The only defense they have is to sub
mit written reports on their own behalf.
Finally, the report concludes that the
psychiatrists are asked to do something
they are not trained to do. They must
determine whether an employee is capable
of doing his job. Yet the psychiatrists
know little about the job and have been
trained only to diagnose illnesses. The
employee, meanwhile, must prove his
innocence or competence.
Our sources claim that the forced fit-ness-for-futy
examinations cause more
psychological damage than they prevent.
Watch on Waste: The armed forces and
public works agencies recently scraped the
bottom of the barrel when they ran short
of funds while President Carter battled
with Congress until the last minute over
how much they would get.
We received a number of protests from
military employees who could not collect
their salaries. Others had to pay their own
travel expenses and wait to be reimbursed.
But at the Army Corps of Engineers, the
top brass were as loose with the taxpayers'
money as ever. Several of them spent a
week at a Savannah, Ga., resort.
It was billed as a conference, and there
were some productive work sessions. But
they brought along their wives. And they
stayed at the luxurious Savannah Inn,
which offered golf, tennis and swimming
between sessions.
They also used nearby riding tables and
fishing boats. The festivities included a T
shirt night and a country-western buffet,
complete with live music.
The brass hats had to pay S28 a day out
of their own pockets to cover their wives'
expenses. But the women were flown to
Savannah from all corners of the country,
free of charge. In one instance, the Army
had to send an extra plane to carry all the
wives.
The taxpayers, of course, picked up 'he
$45,000 bill. Yet the Pentagon was
supposed to be low on funds. The White
House had just ordered a 20 percent c;jt us
administrative travel, and the orders
specifically urged the elimination of staff
retreats.
A corps spokesman insisted it was not
improper to bring the wives on government
planes. In the future, he said, the corps
would comply with the president's order to
reduce travel.
It's just hard to break old habits.
Watch on Waste, Part II. Government
scholarships are supposed to be awarded to
those who cannot afford an education. But
on American Samoa, scholarships are
granted to critics of the government to
shut them up.
The money for the scholarships, of
course, is put up by the American
taxpayers.
The daughter of Samoa's House
Speaker, for example, received a
scholarship after a promised government
job fell through. Presumably, this soothed
the feelings of both the daughter and the
Speaker.
A lawyer involved in litigation against
the island's attorney general received
another scholarship. A third grant went to
the man who was supposed to become pre
siJent of the Samoan Community College
hut was rejected by :he Samoan governor.
The scholarship was a consolation prize,
which kept him mollified.
The three scholarships cost the taxpayer-
a mtal of $150,000
Copyright, 1978
United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
