OCR Text |
Show Comments Free Press - Wednesday, February 26, 1997 - Page 2 Is it still Editorial Abraham Lincoln promised that "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." The tenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which is also part of the Bill of Rights, asserts that the rights of individual states shall be reserved. "In order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility. .promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves 3nd our posterity," the Founding Fathers ordained and established the Constitution of the United States of America. And according to the Declaration of Independence, "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among man, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Of course, the United States in her infancy was quite a different organization from what we see among us today. The very freedoms that drew our ancestors, and continue to draw the huddled masses and the wretched refuse to the land symbolized by the Mother of Exiles, may seem to have little resemblance to the ideals formulated by people who were willing to give their very lives for their cause. Our own entrance into this country paved the way for eventual injustices as we displaced the Native Americans in our quest for our own freedom. Those early immigrants may have felt that there was room enough for all, but perhaps somewhere along the line, that second group may have started to feel superior in some way to what they may have viewed as "savages." The influx of people brought about new methods, new philosophies and new problems. Eventually, elected officials had to address those problems and find practical solutions, perhaps with the goal of satisfying the greatest number of people. Housing laws favor group homes Lehi residents who have been fighting the establishment of a group home in their neighborhood should resist the . temptation to take their frustrations out on the Lehi City Government. Because of federal fair housing laws, local governments have little authority to say who can and who can't live in any particular neighborhood in their com-- munities. These laws provide fair and equitable housing for millions of Americans who used to be limited in their choice of housing because of race, religion or disability Group homes, like that to be operated in Lehi by Youth Services International, are one of the greatest tests of our fair housing laws. But the same laws that ensure that black families can purchase homes anywhere they desire and that people with disabilities have the same rights as everyone else, must of necessity extend those rights to everyone. , Other communities have fought these types of group homes and the consequences have been painful and costly, as taxpayers have footed bills for lawsuits ranging into the millions of dollars. Lehi city government protected its residents from this kind of legal cost, and they are to be commended for it. Group homes, which serve a variety of needs in our community that were once handled by large institutions, push the limits of the law. They provide housing for individuals with disabilities, youths with criminal backgrounds, and, sometimes, disabled individuals with criminal tendencies. The theory behind the group home is that all of these people are better served environment than in a more familv-like they would be in an institution. People with disabilities have a better chance at a rich, fulfilling life in a group home that is part of the community. Youthful offenders have a better chance of rehabilitation in that same setting. The Lehi youth home, for example, will probably house primarily juvenile offenders whose activities don't merit incarceration in a youth correctional facility but who need supervision. Lehi residents may never learn who lives in the home or the nature of their criminal offense because fair housing laws and privacy laws prevent that information from becoming part of the public record. Nevertheless, most people who live near the YSI home are pretty sure that aren't the their new neighbors-to-b- e kind of kids they want next door. It's easy to understand why people get upset. On the other hand, YSI officials know they are going to find that same type of resistance wherever they go. If they were to bow to public pressure in every' instance, no group home would ever be established. But they also know-tha- t federal law and several recent court rulings are on their side. Sometimes they aren't nice about it. Frankly, they don't have to be. The resulting conflict is natural and painful, but fair housing laws make the outcome inevitable. The courts will rule in favor of YSI, and any official obstructions will be at Lehi's cost. Many people may not like it, but group homes are here to stay. Lehi officials took the only course available to them in allowing YSI to operate its group home in the city. full-scal- e Taking six hours to see Standing in line for two hours to buy tickets, I had to wonder if this was going to be worth it. After all, the movie is 20 years old. I know most of the dialogue by heart. And the images are such a part of our culture that I wasn't sure I really needed to see Star Wars again. But the kids, you know? The kids wanted to go. I couldn't let the kids down. So after one failed attempt on a previous Saturday, I went down and joined' the crowd in Provo early Saturday morning in hopes of getting five tickets to the 2:10 show. Ticket sales started at 10:30, but I went around 9 to get a "good place" in line. Tliis would, I figured, allow me time to get back for my daughter's noon basketball game. Then I could grab everybody and drive back to Provo just in time to wait in line again. It was just me and kids. Sharon had seen Star Wars the first time, thank you very much, and she had things to do. So I waited. I took a book and read. I talked to people in line about how stupid it was to wait in line again to see a move we'd waited in line to see 20 years ago. We were around the corner and down the bend from the ticket office, so we couldn't see any action. Instead, we learned empathy for our brothers in Russia who wait in similar lines to buy bread. slowAt 10:30 the line started moving ly. An employee of the theater came around the corner and made the long trek to where we waited to tell everyone that a separate line was forming for folks who wanted to see the 11:45 show. Off they scurried, and the for just line started moving more quickly a moment. Then it slowed to a crawl all over again. About 15 minutes, or maybe an hour, later (time started to get pretty fuzzy), the theater employee was back announcing that the 11:45 show had sold out, but folks wanting tickets for the 2:10 show could come and join a separate line. , A pack of us forged ahead into the where we again waited and shuffled, new-line- 20-year-o- ., ., ,.,,,,,.,. mm The Editor's Column By MARC HADDOCK slowly sneaking up on the ticket booth. It was now 11:15 and the noon basketball game was looking like a long shot. When I was four away from the sales, Mr. Theater Employee was back, announcing loudly: "The 2:10 show has sold out. This is now the line for the 4:45 show." At this point I decided to be flexible. Sure, Sharon and I had plans for about 5 that evening, but certainly she would understand. Besides, the kids would be so disappointed. So I forged ahead and purchased five still early tickets for the 4:45 showing enough to get the discount ticket price. And I walked away with my prize at 11:30. The kids were thrilled. Sharon was understanding. In fact, she understood me too well. "For the kids?" she hooted. "But if you'd rather see a movie than go with me, then go ahead." We left: for the show at about 3, wanting to get a good place in line. This time we were in luck. We sat on a blanket on the sidewalk and made ourselves comfortable for an hour or so until the previous audience filed out and we were allowed to move in. After we got home that evening, I figured I had spent about six hours of my Saturday dedicated to Star Wars. And I had a lot of stuff I needed to get done. But the kids had a great time. So, when do you think I need to get to Provo this Saturday if I'm going to get tickets for The Empire Strikes Back? . . I made a special effort to be in the audience at BYU last week to hear Kuba and Helen Beck, Numbers 626 and 6, respectively, on Oskar Schindler's list. Just seeing them and realizing who they are is significant. More than just survivors; they represent a miracle. Statistically, those on Schindler's list represent less than two one hundredths of one percent of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Think of the families that were completely obliterated every trace of their for generations lives completely erased! According to the movie, the descendants of those on Schindler's list now number approxand that's in spite of the fact imately 6,000 that many, if not most, of the female concentration camp survivors came away sterile for life; a sinister gift from the infamous Joseph Mengele and others of his ilk; given in the name of "medical experimentation" or by deliberate poisoning. All of the Jews murdered in Europe would be represented today by at least 35 to 40 million descendants four times the number of Latter-daSaints in the world. As a result of the Holocaust, Europe is no longer a population center for the Jews. According to Britannica, three fourths of the world's Jewish population is now in Russia, Israel and the United States. Schindler is credited with saving approximately 1,100 people. About a thousand were on lus list of workers. Kuba Beck was with Schindler when the other 100 were saved. They were found among hundreds who had been locked and abandoned in railroad boxcars in the dead of winter. The few who survived had done so on the remains of the dead. It was so cold that some of them were frozen to the floor of the boxcar and their flesh tore away as they were lifted to freedom. Both Becks made it clear that the actual suffering and cruelty was far worse than even the movie could portray. y " Dick JSs 1 Boland 1997 Creators Syndicate, Inc. to do away with billboard advertising near schools. I guess kids are really big on billboards and are so stupid that they would immediately succumb to suggestive advertising. They would also like to ban the use of cigarette advertising on and other products. In hats, other words, they wish to do away with in the the First Amendment entirely name of good health. The New York attorney general wants to eliminate the use of vending machines to sell cigarettes across the entire state. This suggestion resulted in him getting his name bandied about by and little else. What has the media happened to the war on drugs? Does the t, Daly Planet By RUSS DALY To accomplish those changes, Congress, with approval from an agreed-upopercentage of individual states, adopted additional amendments to the Constitution framen work. Some of these changes the abolition of were, in my opinion, slavery, for example absolutely necessary to the continued success of the country. Others such as succession in the presidency provided clarification. In my mind, the amendments regarding universal suffrage, without regard to either gender or race, were ludicrous, because I believe everyone of a specified age should have inherently had the right to vote all along. But in addition to the official constitutional amendments, governing bodies have, through the years, enacted laws that I believe have, perhaps unintentionally, eaten away at the framework that founded our country. I look at the move among groups to brandish their causes under the guise of "rights," claiming their own rights have been violated at the hands of another. At what point, however, do the rights of one group infringe on the rights of others by bestowing more rights on a protected group. Many people view Affirmative Action as legislation that has turned sour, deteriorating from the worthy goal of promoting society. Promoters of alternative lifestyles are often viewed as radicals who are looking for legislation that actually gives them more rights than traditional life adherents. And yet, when it comes to the issue of employment benefits, for example, I believe we should modify our current proposals to include any assignee as the beneficiary of such benefits. Any good legislation has the potential of curtailing the rights of one group, even if it is designed to protect the rights of others. And what about states rights when that such legislation is mandated by the federal government and supersedes any local gov- ernment law. Our government federal, state, county is literally and local governments alike choking in the grasps of bureaucracy, external influence and threat of litigation. The size of government, the powerful lobbying factions, and the many new laws that bind a government from acting on behalf of the people have weakened that government that was created to protect us and to provide a level of representation for which many of our ancestors gave their very lives. It is time for elected officials at all levels to listen to the will of the people instead of the will of the wallet, and to restore the faith in the American public that government is truly "of the people, by the people and for the people." Perhaps we need to reassess the courage of Benjamin Franklin, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who said "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." ably a hero of gigantic proportions. Looking over the Obvious By BRETT BEZZANT Kuba learned only after the war that his parents and two brothers were among some 100,000 Jews who had been taken to a forest and executed. Even worse, the Nazis had some twisted notion that they could make soap from the human remains, but their plot failed and they developed plans for the gas chambers (or "masquerades" as the Becks so aptly called them). In Krakow, Poland, the Jewish cemetery was desecrated by using the headstones for road mix and by building the concentration camp directly on the site of the cemetery. The more elaborate marble monuments were shipped to Germany for their planned postwar victory monument. At age 15 Helen Beck was working in a forced labor camp. Only after the war did she learn that her parents were killed in the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. She was accused of treason and faced immediate execution for altering her camp uniform. Schindler saved her with a bribe. She says the memory of the black smoke and the smell of burning human flesh from the crematorium in Auschwitz will always be with her. She remembers how Schindler pled with them at war's end to not seek revenge to be better than the Germans. by Although he was a war profiteer slave labor a womanizer and a traitor to his country, to Kuba and Helen Beck and the others on the list, Schindler was unquestion Perhaps the greatest lessons of the Holocaust are found in the reasons why governments, Christian religions and other institutions turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the mass extermination of millions. After some of survivors returned to their home city of Krakow, they lived in a temporary shelter that was once an orphanage. Even after all they had endured through five long years of war, Nazi hoodlums broke in and killed some of them at random. Almost no one would help them before or during the war and there was little or no compassion after the war. Even more astounding, some would have us believe it never happened. No wonder survivors like the Becks give so much of their time to keep the truth from ever being forgotten. How does one survive such an ordeal? Helen remembers these approximate words of advice: "If you think you're hungry, you can go 30 days without food and survive; if you think you're thirsty, you can go 3 days without water and survive; but if you go 3 minutes without hope, you're as good as gone." Of interest to Latter-daSaints, I've often thought that surely there must be something in the prophecies of the scriptures about the Holocaust. Since I'm no expert on Isaiah, the best I could come up with is JSM 1:18-2which speaks of "great tribulation on the Jews ... such as was not before sent upon (them) .... And except those days should be shortened, there should none of their flesh be saved..." D&C 98:16,17 is also noteworthy something about the hearts of the Jews turning unto the prophets, and the prophets unto the Jews. Latter-daSaints should reverence the kindred history and experience of the Jews. I, for one, am grateful for the gracious visit of the Becks as well as the courage and compassion of Oskar Schindler. y y Letters to the editor YSI misrepresented nature of proposed group home Editor: During the meeting we as concerned citizens had with YSI regarding the group home to be put in Lehi, I was told by Tim Welch to The FDA should stop blowing smoke Picture, if you will, a man who has been sentenced to death, standing on the gallows with a noose around his neck. The clergyman in attendance is asking if he has any last words or last request. The convict asks for a cigarette so that he may enjoy one more smoke before they pull the lever that will send him to what may or may not be a smoke-fre- e environment. He is told that the Food and Drug Administration has forbidden the use of tobacco in our prisons so that our convicted felons can live a long life. "Far fetched," you say. Not if you look at the ongoing war on tobacco by the FDA and politicians who continue to use the problem to get their names in the . news. The attorney general of the state of New York even went so far as to suggest raising the smoking age to 21. These are the same people who send children off to war in some obscure country, but when these young men are being shot at, they will be unable to calm their nerves with a smoke they bought in New York. In its latest abuse of power, the FDA is proposing regulations far beyond its charter in an effort to wipe out tobacco forever. Sure, just like they have wiped out drugs. The agency would like The equality in the workplace to a regulation that no longer places the most qualified individual in a job. I believe that no one should ever have to be the victim of hate crimes, just because truly responsible members of society do not do things like that to other members of the The legacy of the Holocaust and Schindler's List film ld evident that we hold these truths? attorney general really think that cigarettes are causing more of a problem than crack? Is this entire attack on cigarettes a trick to take our minds off the real problems? Is he naive enough to think driving tobacco underground will be any more successful than what has occurred with drugs? This agency even wants to ban the sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco companies. I guess that would put an end to car racing. Can the beer companies be far behind? Will they be the next victims of the FDA Gestapo? How can we have a Budweiser car do 200 mph and win the race but be unable to accept the Winston Cup because it might cause one of our young to light up? It's beginning to look like children are reason to do away with the First Amendment. We should all lose rights because we are incapable of governing our young. Politicians who used to kiss babies now hold them up in the air and defy us to vote against them. I do not think anyone should smoke, but cigano rettes are not going to go away matter what the government does to the industry. We do not need another illicit drug on the market, at least until we can control the ones that are out there in the schoolyard now. be quiet because other people had questions to ask. The article in last week's Lehi Free Press raised even more questions that I would like to ask: Why would it be hard for YSI to run a group home for truly disabled youth? Is it because there isn't enough money to be made in that type of business? You said in the meeting that you weren't a large money making business and according to Youth Services International, inc. report second quarter fy 1997 operating results on Feb. 10, 1997, revenues for the six months ended Dec. 31, 1996 totaled $57.0 million compared with $47.0 million in the prior fiscal year's six month period an increase of 10.0 million or 21.3 percent. 'This increase in revenues principally reflects the continued expansion and increases in residential populations." Timothy P. Cole, YSI's Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Our overall results reflect a general increase in our core business juvenile justice." He went on to say: "The dynamics of our induschanges in laws regarding juvenile try offenders, fiscal constraints of our clients, and the continued rise in juvenile crime require YSI to assume a leading role in identifying and implementing solutions." This really doesn't sound like a business that is looking to help disabled youth, but a business that is making a lot of money on juvenile delinquents! Another question I would like answered by YSI is if these group homes are so tightly controlled places, why were we told by state officials that these boys are constantly running away and that although they have no record of them hurting anyone physically, that they could very easily hide in our yards or steal our cars? I'm sorry Mr. Welch, but if I have these youths trespassing on my property or stealing my cars, I would say yes, they are hurting me and my neighbors. They are disrupting our way of life! You also state that you do not "bully" your way into a community. Wrong! you came in to Kerns claiming that you wanted to put a home in the area that was for "handicapped" youth, You also claimed that you were a 'nonprofit company.' They proved you wrong on both counts. You came to Lehi and claimed that you wanted to put in a group home for "disabled" youth, but now you say that there may be others besides "disabled" boys living at the home. Also, don't you think that threatening a law suit against Lehi City if they don't let you in is certainly bullying your way into the community? If you are indeed such a reputable company why didn't you come into our community and tell the truth and represent your compaa home for court appointny for what it is ed juvenile offenders instead of representing them as "disabled" youth? It makes us as citizens wonder what will really go on in that home; in other words can we really trust anything you say? Yes, YSI group homes for youth are needed and we appreciate your efforts to house these boys, but for safety reasons alone do not house them in the middle of our town, or any town for that matter. And not near our d schools, or community center, or in neighborhoods. If you want to be so invisible, go where there are little or no people and be honest with the people and if they chose to build by you then that's their choice. We are taxpaying citizens and, yes, we do live in the USA, therefore we do have rights under the laws! Yes, YSI it sounds and feels to me like you are a bully, a bully of the worst kind, because we as citizens of Lelii are being beat up badly! Annette Critchett k family-oriente- |