Opinion
Lawrence Journal-World l LJWorld.com l Tuesday, April 21, 2015
EDITORIALS
Losing ground
Dems need white working-class men By Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times
An agreement to freeze tuition in exchange for flat state funding only means state universities in Kansas will continue to lose ground.
K
ansas legislators say they are concerned about rising tuition at state universities but apparently not concerned enough to consider additional state funding to reduce the need for tuition increases. In fact, a “compromise” written into the current version of the state budget agrees to hold state university funding steady (not increase it) in exchange for universities agreeing not to raise tuition. Legislators aren’t the only ones concerned about higher tuition placing an additional burden on families and simply making it financially impossible for some students to pursue higher education opportunities at all. However, freezing tuition without supplying additional state resources to offset rising operational costs is a one-sided deal. Although officials at Kansas University and other state schools have agreed to that deal, Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz went on the offensive this week, saying in a letter to the Topeka Capital-Journal, “Freezing tuition without any increase in state support will severely limit our ability to maintain the quality academic programs our students deserve.” Two new reports from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) supported the contention that, even with rising tuition, state universities are falling behind and failing even to return to pre-recession levels of state funding. According to the SHEEO report, state appropriations in Kansas dropped by 18.4 percent, or $1,276, per full-time equivalent student from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2014. From FY 2009 to FY 2014, tuition costs per full-time students have increased by 20 percent, but the $980 full-time equivalent tuition increase still was less than the loss in state funding. When tuition and state aid are combined, universities’ total per-student revenue has declined by 2.4 percent. The AAUP reports a 7.9 percent decline in state appropriations for higher education between 2008 and 2013 and just a 2.77 increase in tuition in the same period. While these reports support the case that tuition increases are tied to state funding reductions, not all legislators see that connection. House Speaker Ray Merrick told the Capital-Journal that tuition was on the rise before the recession triggered reductions in state funding. “It’s intellectually dishonest,” he said, “to lay the blame at the feet of the Legislature when history clearly demonstrates that tuition will rise regardless of the money the universities receive from the state.” So, it seems the best state universities in Kansas can hope for is flat per-student funding that’s below pre-recession levels with no opportunity to make up the difference with tuition increases. They can only hope that in final negotiations to balance the state budget, the Legislature doesn’t decide to reduce university funding while keeping the ban on higher tuition in place. Either way, it’s no wonder Kansas university officials are worrying about how to maintain the quality of their institutions. LAWRENCE
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Democrats were once the party of the white working man — but that was a long time ago. In the 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama won only one-third of the votes of white working-class men, a modern-day low. Mitt Romney, who didn’t seem much like a blue-collar guy, swept the votes of those working stiffs by a huge margin. In the 2014 congressional election, Democratic candidates did even worse, one of the main reasons they lost nine Senate seats and their Senate majority. That imbalance has tormented Democratic activists, who still see themselves as champions of the working class, the party’s core identity for most of the last century. “If Democrats can’t figure out how to appeal to today’s working-class voters, then they don’t deserve to lead,” said Stan Greenberg, a political strategist and pollster who helped Bill Clinton win the presidency in 1992. So they’ve done polls and held conferences. They’ve launched a grass-roots campaign to connect with bluecollar workers who aren’t union members. White noncollege voters — which is how pollsters define “working class” — have become the Democratic Party’s great white whale. That may seem like a silly hang-up in view of the conventional wisdom that Democrats have a virtual lock on the next few presidential
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White noncollege voters — which is how pollsters define ‘working class’ — have become the Democratic Party’s great white whale.” elections by virtue of demographics. White men, after all, are a steadily shrinking piece of the electorate. When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, about one-third of all voters were white noncollege men. By 2012, their share was only about half as large: 17 percent. The groups that are growing — women, minorities, young people — tend to vote Democratic. The party’s next nominee could still win the White House based mostly on their turnout; that’s how Obama won his second term. But abandoning the hunt for white working-class men would make Democratic candidates vulnerable to any Republican candidate who could win a healthy share of minority voters, as George W. Bush did in 2000 and 2004. Equally important, because of the concentration of minority voters in urban districts, it would doom the Democrats to second place in congressional elections. So it’s a practical problem, not just a sentimental one. Almost by definition, identity politics is one source of the problem; some white noncollege voters have come to view Democrats as a party that cares about women and
minorities more than it cares about them. “I think this is where Democrats screw up, you know?” former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who says he may run for president, told Yahoo News recently. “I think that they have kind of unwittingly used this group, white working males, as a whipping post for a lot of their policies. And then when they react, they say they’re being racist.” The biggest driver of white working-class disaffection, however, is clearly economic insecurity, combined with a sense that big government hasn’t done much to stand up for the little guy. Poll after poll has shown that workers without college educations are more pessimistic than anyone else about the economic future. That’s only logical, since their job prospects have been worsening for decades. But there’s a striking racial disconnect: White people are more pessimistic than minorities. When the Pew Research Center asked in 2012 whether they expected their children to enjoy a better standard of living, 56 percent of black and Latino respondents said yes, but only 41 percent of whites were optimistic. How do Democrats plan to get out of the hole they’re in? Part of the answer is easy: They’ll adopt some version of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s economic populism. They’ll denounce the excesses of Wall Street and demand a better deal for the working class. That was the very first note Hillary Rodham Clin-
ton sounded last week in Iowa. “The deck is still stacked in favor of those already at the top,” she said. “There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker. … And there’s something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses.” But Greenberg has proposed adding another piece to the Democrats’ message: a more serious commitment to both campaign reform and a leaner, more efficient federal government — an updated version of Bill Clinton’s 1996 pledge that the era of big government is over. He noted that Hillary Clinton also called last week for outlawing campaign spending by undisclosed donors, “even if that takes a constitutional amendment.” Democrats don’t expect to win a majority of white working-class voters next year — let alone white working-class men. But they’d like to stop their slide. And, of course, Republicans will compete for the same votes. Several potential GOP candidates have decried the stagnation of bluecollar wages — although, like the Democrats, they haven’t offered much yet in the way of detailed remedies. At least working-class voters will get plenty of rhetorical attention. That won’t solve their problems — but they won’t be able to complain that nobody’s thinking about them anymore. — Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. His email address is doyle.mcmanus@ latimes.com.
OLD HOME TOWN
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From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for April 21, 1915: years “‘A place for evago erybody to travel IN 1915 and every one traveling in his place,’ is the motto of the city officials and they are making preparation to force every one to obey the traffic regulations in Lawrence. In the past there has been little attention paid to the traffic regulations of the city …” — Compiled by Sarah St. John
Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld.com/news/lawrence/ history/old_home_town.
PUBLIC FORUM
Rural protections
A better future
Relays tradition
To the editor: Last year we were forced to protect our rural community from a 2008 valueadded agricultural business: conditional use permit (CUP) being issued on a 5-acre parcel in our area. Now, text amendments are threatening our way of life. Who would have thought this could happen in our county? We agree that this CUP is beneficial for rural residents to develop their own business by canning fruits they have grown or establishing a vineyard for a distillery. We feel that this particular CUP venture is a loophole for an established Lawrence business to relocate its factory outside the city with no crops grown on the plot. Our primary concern now is that the text amendment, if approved April 29, would allow corporations to buy any parcel of land that was divided before 2006 and build a 10,000-square-foot commercial factory as long as it can be linked to this CUP. By removing acreage and road frontage, what will make our rural community different from the city? Residents of rural Douglas County, you are at risk. Large buildings, parking lots, lagoons and additional traffic will quickly change the quality of our country living and property values. To be clear, we are pro-agriculture. Restrictions are needed to tighten the loophole (acreage, frontage, owner must live on property, etc.). We understand that some updates may be needed due to growth in Douglas County, however removing these is not the answer. Let’s keep “county” in Douglas County. Linda Long, Quinn Miller and 34 other rural Douglas County residents
To the editor: Earth Day, 45 years later, is a global event now celebrated in over 140 nations. But every day should be Earth Day, and, despite the decades of environmental activism and environmental legislation, the effects of climate warming due to greenhouse gas emissions threatening human society more than ever. On Earth Day, many Americans might ask themselves: What can I do? One specific step is to ask our elected representatives in Congress to pass legislation placing a fee on carbon-based fuels at the source. This fee per ton of CO2 emitted could increase each year so that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels within a decade. All of the money collected would be reimbursed to American households equitably. The predictably increasing price on carbon will send a clear market signal that motivates investors and entrepreneurs to develop the new clean-energy economy. A recent econometric study by Regional Economic Models, Inc (REMI) found that a progressive carbon fee and dividend would produce a decline in CO2 emissions of 33 percent after only ten years. More important, national employment would increase by 2.1 million jobs after ten years and the Gross Domestic Product would increase by $70-85 billion from 2020 on. Despite opposition, the clean-energy economy is growing and a carbon fee will accelerate that change — a change that promises a better future for Americans and the Earth. Dale Nimz, Lawrence
To the editor: The KU Relays are a unique and wonderful thread in our community’s cultural fabric. It is a fun and relaxed event that is easy and affordable for the whole family. I have no idea how big the economic infusion is of so many out-of-town collegiate and high school teams, but it has to be better than a kick in the head. Even with this year’s last-minute changes necessitated by rainy weather (this is the Relays after all) it was still a delight. The new Rock Chalk Park does for KU track and field what the Sporting Park stadium did for Sporting KC soccer. It is a world-class facility with a more intimate seating appropriate for track and field. So many college sports have morphed into something more spectacle than sport. Yet track and field continues to be sport in its most genuine form. Actual student athletes give their all for KU just as their predecessors did in the 1930s, the 1960s or any other decade. That is something to celebrate and enjoy. For more than 160 years, Lawrence has changed, adapted and evolved. For 88 of those years, the Relays have done the same. Anyone who goes to the Relays knows that they continue to be an important annual part of what makes Lawrence a special place to call home. Thank you to KU, Coach Redwine and all of the many community volunteers whose efforts help maintain the Relays as such a special event. Scott Morgan, Lawrence