OPINION
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD !"LJWorld.com !"Thursday, September 29, 2011
10A
Bill seeks change in Fed procedure
EDITORIALS
Enrollment concern Kansas University officials should look at a variety of financial, scheduling and recruitment issues that may be contributing to this fall’s significant enrollment decline.
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nrollment figures released Tuesday by the Kansas Board of Regents may finally be getting the attention of officials at Kansas University. According to the regents, KU recorded an overall enrollment decline this fall of 2.5 percent compared with fall 2010. Enrollment actually increased by 2.3 percent at the KU Medical Center, but that was more than offset by a 3.1 percent decline at KU’s Lawrence campus and the Edwards Campus in Overland Park. The only other university to report an enrollment decline was Emporia State University, whose enrollment was down 4.6 percent. To their credit, KU officials expressed concern at the enrollment figures. For a number of years, officials had seemed satisfied with enrollment figures that were rising and falling slightly from year to year, saying that flat enrollment was fine when the university was dealing with reduced financial resources. On Tuesday, Chancellor Bernadette GrayLittle was singing a different tune. “For KU to achieve its mission of educating leaders,” she said, “we need to reverse this decline.” She went on to say the university already was putting more emphasis on student recruitment and retention and has “undertaken initiatives to increase the number of students who come to KU ready to succeed.” That’s one part of the equation. Another part is to find students who can afford to pay the ever-rising KU tuition rates. Is there any question that KU’s significant enrollment decline is at least partially a result of more than a decade of significant tuition increases? Year to year, KU almost always requests and gains approval for the largest tuition increases among state universities. At some point, it seems obvious that the increased tuition, along with additional course fees charged in every school except the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was bound to have an impact on enrollment. KU officials talk about increased financial aid possibilities, but apparently those efforts aren’t making the difference for many students. Concerns continue to be expressed around the state about how well KU recruits top students, compared with Kansas State and other schools. KU also seems to be lagging behind other state universities in accommodating nontraditional students through online and evening classes and programs. Even if those issues are more a matter of perception than reality, they deserve the attention of KU officials. The regents’ enrollment report revealed a couple of other trends that may be a reflection of the current struggling economy and job market. The overall enrollment at state universities was up by just 0.7 percent. Such slow growth at the universities would seem to suggest that more students were attending community colleges for their first two years to cut costs. However, overall enrollment at the state’s 19 community colleges was down 0.2 percent. Where was the biggest enrollment increase? At the state’s six vocational-technical schools, which saw a 7 percent increase. Apparently the value of a liberal arts education is losing ground to the simple desire of many Kansans to learn a skill or trade that will more directly increase their chances of finding a job — without leaving them with a hefty student-loan debt. Many students, including many from Kansas, still want to attend a major research university like KU. Trying to make sure that students who come to KU are ready for the university’s academic challenges is fine, but it should be obvious to officials that the financial challenges of attending KU can be equally daunting for many prospective students. LAWRENCE
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WASHINGTON — “If two people always agree,” says Ben Bernanke, “one of them is redundant.” So, imagine what the Federal Reserve chairman thinks of Rep. Barney Frank’s legislation designed to dampen dissent within the Fed. Fond of diversity in everything but thought, a certain kind of liberal favors mandatory harmony (e.g., campus speech codes). Such liberals, being realists at least about the strength of their arguments, discourage “too much” debate about them (e.g., restrictions on campaign spending to disseminate political advocacy). Now Frank wants to strip the presidents of the Fed’s 12 regional banks of their right to vote as members of the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee. Five presidents are permitted to vote at any one time, and Frank’s bill is partly a response to three of them voting incorrectly, in his opinion. In August, the FOMC voted 7-3 in favor of an indefinite extension of the very low interest rates of the last three years. Frank says he has “long been troubled” from a “theoretical democratic standpoint” by the “anomaly” of important decisions affecting national economic policy being made by persons “selected with absolutely no public scrutiny or confirmation.” It was not, however, until August that this affront to Frank’s democratic sensibilities became so intolerable that he proposed a legislative remedy. When three regional presi-
George Will
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georgewill@washpost.com
Frank says he has ‘long been troubled’ from a ‘theoretical democratic standpoint’ by the ‘anomaly’ of important decisions affecting national economic policy being made by persons ‘selected with absolutely no public scrutiny or confirmation.’”
dents voted their skepticism about cheap money, Frank decided to act against the problem, as he sees it, that allowing five regional bank presidents to vote “has the effect of skewing policy to one side of the Fed’s dual mandate.” That is the side of preserving the currency as a store of value — controlling inflation. This comes, Frank thinks, at the expense of the other side, which he calls “promoting employment.” The actual language of the mandate speaks of promoting “maximum employment,” which is problematic: “Maximum” means “the highest attainable” and this might depend on ignoring the other half of the
mandate. The results are skewed, Frank says, because the regional bank presidents come from “a selfperpetuating group of private citizens who select each other and who are treated as equals in setting federal monetary policy with officials appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.” That is, members of the boards of directors of the regional banks select those banks’ presidents and those members are — here we come to the crux of Frank’s complaint — “overwhelmingly representative of business,” and particularly the financial sector, therefore “they are not in any way representative of the American economy.” Not “in any way”? Heavy representation of the economy’s financial sector in the governance of the central bank does not seem bizarre. But Frank is indignant that in the past decade 80 percent of dissents in the FOMC were from members concerned about excessively cheap money, and that 97 percent of those dissents came from presidents of regional banks. Frank’s prescription for institutionalizing a policy of cheap money comes as Europe’s economy seems about to follow America’s into convulsions caused by monetary gorging. Nowadays it is obligatory to present any proposal as a cure for the decline of comity in Washington. So Frank says that “until recently, the tenor of Federal Reserve deliberations was one that promoted consensus,” but now “the Federal Reserve
has been affected by the disdain for consensus and the contentiousness that has affected our politics in general.” Note Frank’s insinuation: Any dissent from the policy he favors — he is not satisfied with 70 percent support in the August FOMC vote — constitutes “disdain for consensus” and unhealthy “contentiousness.” He says such dissent “has now become a significant constraint on national economic policymaking,” but is unpersuasive about how the constraining works: He says a 7-3 decision “is clearly less effective” influencing economic behavior than unanimity would be. Therefore, dissent must be discouraged as inimical to the national interest. When Frank complains that the regional bank presidents are “neither elected nor appointed by officials who are themselves elected,” he is almost asserting what he is clearly implying — that the Fed itself should be tamer, more compliant to the political culture, at least when liberalism sets its tone. The 2010 elections cost Democrats their House majority and Frank his chairmanship of the Financial Services Committee. So his legislation is not an immediate threat to the Fed’s independence. Nevertheless, it is notable that the left now has its Ron Paul. Notable and, in a sense, appropriate because one of liberalism’s steady aims is to break more and more institutions to the saddle of centralized power. — George Will is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
PUBLIC FORUM
Arts funding
Tea party could boil over This country is in a world of hurt if the likes of Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry wins the next election. It might be in greater trouble if Barack Obama does. I can take no credit — or blame — for that analysis. It originated with one of my colleagues, a veteran political reporter, and he shared it one day not long ago as we were chatting in the office. It troubles me for one simple reason: It makes sense. So here is how his thinking goes. The genteel, pragmatic Republicanism of the past has been supplanted by a pitchforksand-torches mentality, a funhouse mirror distortion of traditional conservatism. Meaning, of course, the tea party. These are folks who don’t just support the death penalty; they cheer for executions. They don’t just oppose health care reform, they shout “Let him die” to the uninsured individual who faces life-threatening illness. They are the true believers: virulently anti-government, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-tax, anti-facts and, most of all, antithe coming demographic changes represented by a dark-skinned president with an African name. They are the people who want “their” country back. The old guard of the GOP doesn’t much like them, but it likes winning so it keeps its mouth shut. You might think Obama’s reelection would solve this, offering as it would stark repudiation of the politics of panic, paranoia and reactionary extremism this
Leonard Pitts Jr.
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lpitts@miamiherald.com
In less than 20 years, the locus of radical antigovernment extremism has moved from remote woods to Capitol Hill.
ideology represents. The problem is, these folks thrive on repudiation, on a free-floating conviction that they have been done wrong, cheated and mistreated by the tides of history and progress, change and demography. So there is every reason to believe, particularly given the weakness of the economy, that being repudiated in next year’s election would only make them redouble their intensity, confirming them as it would in their own victimhood. And ask yourself: What form could that redoubling take? How do you up the ante from this? What is the logical next step after two years of screaming, rocks through windows, threats against legislators and rhetoric that could start a fire? An awful, obvious answer suggests itself. You reject it instinc-
tively. This is, after all, America, not some unstable fledgling democracy. Then you realize it was not so long ago that a man blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City out of anti-government sentiment not so different from that espoused by the tea party. And you remember how that tragedy exposed an entire network of armed anti-government zealots gathering in the woods. And you read where the Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of radical anti-government groups spiked to 824 in 2010, a 61 percent increase over just the previous year. And you wonder. This is not a prediction, only a speculation — and a suggestion that those of us who have regarded the craziness of recent years as an aberration, a temporary temper tantrum from people who feel threatened and dislocated, may have been entirely too sanguine. In less than 20 years, the locus of radical anti-government extremism has moved from remote woods to Capitol Hill. How should the rest of us respond? That’s a question we urgently need to answer. They say they’ve come to take “their” country back. Maybe it’s time we took them at their word. — Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald. He chats with readers from noon to 1 p.m CDT each Wednesday on www.MiamiHerald .com.
To the editor: The editorial “Funding falters” (Sept. 25) focuses attention on problems associated with the governor’s new model of private funding for the Kansas Arts Foundation. One problem, however, goes unmentioned: The new foundation is now in direct competition with local art programs for the same sources of public support. An example is our current effort to secure funding for a new building for Theatre Lawrence. Not only have we been denied access to state and federal funding (as well as national foundations that relied in the past on recommendations by the state arts commission); we find that a number of businesses and corporations that have supported Theatre Lawrence in the past are now reporting solicitation pressures from the new state arts foundation as a reason to deny local support. Local arts programs are now in competition with the state for a limited amount of funding. As things now stand, the arts in Kansas would likely be improved by the elimination of the new arts foundation. Bobby and Eleanor Patton, Lawrence
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OLD HOME TOWN
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From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Sept. 29, 1911: “Last YEARS night saw the AGO close of another of IN 1911 the famous Douglas County Fairs. ... Today was cleanup day at Woodland Park and the process of taking down the tents and bringing the displays back to town made the fair grounds a lively place this morning. — Compiled by Sarah St. John
Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld.com/news/lawrence/ history/old_home_town.