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Show A5 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 VIEWPOINT Opinion and Letters to the Editor The Bourgeoning Debt Load Established January 2, 2007 James L. Davis, Publisher & Editor w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w Colleen A. Davis, Co-Publisher, Office & Advertising Manager Josie Luke, Assistant Editor Lyndsay Reid, Advertising Design Charlotte Williams, Advertising Sales Kathy P. Ockey, Staff Journalist Judi Bishop, Staff Journalist Our Vision To be a valued member of the communities we serve and to be trusted as an honest, truthful and reliable source of news. w w w Our Mission To inform, entertain and provide a public forum for the discussion of events impacting the people of the Emery County area and to inform with news and features relevant to those who call the Castle Valley area home w w w Our Principles We will be ethical in all of our efforts to provide information to the public. We will be unbiased in our reporting and will report the facts as we see them and do our best to focus on the good news of the county, its people, history and way of life. We will be strong and active members of the community and assist in any way that we are able. We will strive to provide the best quality product possible to our readers and advertisers...always. We will verify the details of news we are reporting and if a mistake is made on our part we will correct it immediately. We will always listen to suggestions on how to do our job better. Editorial Submission Guidelines The Emery County Review welcomes and invites letters to the editor and guest opinion articles on public policy or current events. We welcome letters of thanks to individuals who have helped make our community a better place to live, work and play. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit all submissions for space constraints, clarity and errors in fact. Submissions must include author’s name and contact information. Contact information will not be published. Letter’s and opinion articles can be sent to jldavis@theemerycountyreview.com, mailed to The Emery County Review, P.O. Box 487, Orangeville, UT. 84537 or faxed to 435-748-2543. PUBLIC FORUM Thank You Emery County The passing of a brother is never easy and doubly hard when it involves one with as much life and vitality as Charley. Several groups of people helped make this last week bearable and I would like to take a moment to thank them from the bottom of my grieving heart. Fausett Mortuary and especially Steven for the wonderful compassionate way that you handled our brother and his services. You are beyond compare. Thank you to friends, neighbors, relatives and the entire community for your generous outpouring of support. Our parent’s house and phone has been constantly alive with comfort and condolences that were greatly appreciated by all. The Ferron Stake and especially the Blue Hills Ward was outstanding. With hundreds of Family members and friends spread between several houses and motels there was always an over-abundance of support and food. Specifically Norma Funk and the ladies from the relief society who visited on a daily basis and then fed nearly 250 soldiers, family and friends. We love you. The Emery County Sheriff’s Office for the honor guard, traffic control and their presence at the services in honor of my brother’s service to his country and my father’s service to the people of Emery County as a part of the Sheriff’s Office. Finally the United States Military with emphasis on the Marine Corp. The services were wonderful to include the brass quintet, gun salute, honor guard, echo taps and all the trappings of a full military funeral. Not to mention the compassionate way the notification and arrangements for the services were handled. Most importantly for defending our freedom and protecting our families. For those that may have missed the services we have created a memorial site for Charley at www.chuckeddie.com Thank you all - Dave Owens Kanab, Utah Jerry Stotler “There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.” –President Calvin Coolidge A recent statistic said the average American spends 122 percent of their annual income. That means that they go 22 percent deeper into debt each year. Do we even realize how foolish that is? It is financial stupidity, financial suicide. No economy can sustain that rate of indebtedness for a prolonged period. There comes a point when credit cards are maxed out and credit is unavailable. Suddenly, almost 1/4 of your ability to buy (the 22 percent credit overload) is gone like a puff of smoke. Bankruptcy is inevitable, and credit card companies pass those losses to all the other credit card holders. We all pay for the financial immaturity of those who can’t pay off their credit card bills. The failings will ripple across the economy, touching thousands of businesses that won’t get paid for their goods or services. The more cramped people become financially, the greater negative impact on community and county economics. A short time ago, say in your grandfather’s time, consumer debt was considered a character flaw. “What’s the matter, are you so weak that you can’t save your money and pay cash for it?” was the theme. If you can pay $100 a month for something after you buy it, you could have paid the $100 a month into your savings account before you bought it and saved all that interest. It doesn’t take long to pay $8,000 for a $5,000 item at high interest rates. You wouldn’t think of paying $1,500 for a $1,000 item if you wrote a check for it. So why are you willing to overpay because you can stretch it out over a few years? If you buy something, say a big screen TV, put $5,000 on your credit card and pay $50 a month at only 12% percent (if you can get it), at the end of five years you will have paid $3,000 in payments of which $3,000 is interest, but you will still owe the $5,000. The cost to own it so far, however, is $8,000. At 18 percent and $75 a month you will have paid $4,500 in interest and still owe the $5,000. Cost to buy it, $5,000. Cost to own it so far is $9,500. And worse, how much is a five year old big screen TV worth? Another big disadvantage of a general use credit card is that you can’t tell what you are paying for each month, it all blends together. Can it get even dumber? Definitely. If the credit card company jacks up your interest rate to 21 percent or 25 percent, your balance actually goes up every month even though you are making payments. At 25 percent and a $100 payment your five year balance it will be in the area of $5,500 and the interest paid will be almost $6,500. Cost to own the TV will be $11,500 and you are not finished paying for it yet. Even worse, you won’t notice this because, as you make purchases along the way, you will think the increased balance is because of the purchases. That’s called “I Gotcha.” Consider this. If you pay $300 a month in credit card payments and $400 a month in car payment, that’s $700 a month, of which a significant part is lost through interest and depreciation. There’s a much wiser way: Instead, if you were out of debt, you could pay that same $700 a month to yourself for your own financial growth. Suppose you put $500 of that $700 into savings each month at 2 percent interest and the other $200 a month into a cash reserve account, each for two years, compounded only monthly. In the savings account you will have $15,257 and in the cash reserve account you will have $6,103. At the end of two years you will have over $21,000 -- just by paying yourself first. If you pay into your own account instead of a creditor’s account, you can buy a new car for cash in two years. If you will do this and not spend it, at the end of five years, you could have almost $80,000 saved. Get smart. Get out of debt and save the difference. If you have a bundle of cash when the economy struggles, you will have great opportunities to buy property and things at all-time great prices from people who are in a financial bind. Too many of us have a tendency to relieve stress by going out and buying something. But the inability to say “no” to unwise purchases or impulses is a sign of financial immaturity. If you are self-indulgent and can’t handle your money wisely, there will come a reckoning. “Comeuppance” always comes up. Learn to say, “No,” to debt. For example, if you have to finance your recreation, it is not time to recreate in that way at that time, nor are you entitled to it yet. Banks used to have Christmas Club savings accounts so people could save a bundle of money for Christmas time. So also with your vacations. You can have several savings accounts: Vacations, Christmas, New Car, New Truck, New Furniture, etc. Some people feel a need to carry numerous credit cards with them because it makes them feel more adequate, more respectable. They feel their status is higher because if they see something they want they can simply buy it like the rich people do (except rich people pay cash). That is pure foolishness. It is immature. If you can’t save up the money for a purchase, you shouldn’t buy it. You must learn how to delay petty gratifications, especially for diversion: entertainment, recreation, and pleasures. The ability to delay gratifications is a part of maturity. Far too many people have failed to understand the difference between needs and wants, not realizing the significance of the difference. They have become self-indulgent and just buy “stuff” because they want it. Witness all the “stuff” just sitting around your home and not being used. Many garages look more like second hand stores, merchandise is everywhere. A few suggestions: 1. Leave all your credit cards at home unless you know in advance for certain that there is something you must buy now. 2. If it is not on your priority list, don’t buy it. There will always be another sale. Especially technology, it always gets cheaper with time. 3. Get out of debt - Start with making a list of all debt and stack it like a Christmas tree - the little one on top, big ones on the bottom. Pay off the littlest one first and add that payment to the next one on the list, pay that off and add both payments to the next debt, and so on down the list. If I were you, I would shoot for debt free in somewhere around two years. Folks, it is best to get out of debt. The rewards are worth it. (Stotler is a resident of Ferron.) Ben Stein provokes liberal wrath Phyllis Schlafly Copley News Service Ben Stein is known to many as an actor on Comedy Central. But the funniest part about his recent movie “Expelled” is not any clever lines spoken by Stein but the hysterical way liberals are trying to discourage people from seeing it. Stein’s critics fail to effectively refute anything in “Expelled”; they just use epithets to ridicule it and hope they can make it go away. However, it won’t go away; even Scientific American, which labeled the movie “shameful,” concedes that it cannot be ignored. The movie is about how scientists who dare to criticize Darwinism or discuss the contrary theory called intelligent design are expelled, fired, denied tenure, blacklisted, and bitterly denounced. Academic freedom doesn’t extend to this issue. The message of Stein’s critics comes through loud and clear. They don’t want anybody to challenge Darwinian orthodoxy or suggest that intelligent design might be an explanation of the origin of life. Stein, who serves as his own narrator in the movie, is very deadpan about it all. He doesn’t try to convince the audience that Darwinism is a fraud, or that God created the world, or even that some unidentified intelligent design might have started life on Earth. Stein merely shows the intolerance of the universities, the government, the courts, the grant-making foundations and the media, and their determination to suppress any mention of intelligent design. The only question posed by the movie is why, oh why, is there such a deliberate, consistent, widespread, vindictive effort to silence all criticism of dogmatic Darwinism or discussion of alternate theories of the origin of life? Stein interviews scientists who were blacklisted, denied grants and ostracized in the academic community because they dared to write or speak the forbidden words. Liberals are particularly upset because the movie identifies Darwinism, rather than evolution, as the sacred word that must be isolated from criticism. But that semantic choice makes good sense because Darwinism is easily defined by Darwin’s own writings, whereas the word evolution is subject to different and even contrary definitions. The truly funny part of the movie is Stein’s interview with Richard Dawkins, whose best-selling book “The God Delusion” (Mariner Books, $15.95) established this Englishman as the world’s premier atheist. Dawkins is a leading advocate of the theory that all life evolved from a single beginning in an ancient mud puddle, perhaps after being struck by lightning. Putting aside the issue of evolving, how did life begin in the first place? Under Stein’s questioning, Dawkins finally said it is possible that life might have evolved on Earth after the arrival of a more highly developed being from another planet. Aren’t aliens from outer space the stuff of science fiction? And how was the other-planet alien created? According to Dawkins, life must have just spontaneously evolved on another planet, of course without God. Stein spent two years traveling the world to gather material for this movie. He interviewed scores of scientists and academics who say they were retaliated against because of questioning Darwin’s theories. Stein interviewed Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist who lost his position at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution after he published a peer-reviewed article that mentioned intelligent design. Other academics who said they were victims of the anti-intelligent design campus police included astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, denied tenure at Iowa State University, and Caroline Crocker, who lost her professorship at George Mason University. Stein dares to include some filming at the death camps in Nazi Germany as a backdrop for interviews that explain Darwin’s considerable influence on Adolf Hitler and his well-known atrocities. The Darwin-Hitler connection was not a Stein discovery; Darwin’s influence on Hitler’s political worldview, and Hitler’s rejection of the sacredness of human life, is acknowledged in standard biographies of Hitler. Stein also addresses how Darwin’s theories influenced one of the U.S.’s most embarrassing periods, the eugenics fad of the early 20th century. Thousands of Americans were legally sterilized as physically or mentally unfit. Mandatory sterilization based on Darwin’s theories was even approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writing his famous line, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Stein also reminds us that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist who wanted to eliminate the races she believed were inferior. Stein’s message is that the attack on freedom of inquiry is anti-science, anti-American, and anti-the whole concept of learning. His dramatization should force the public, and maybe even academia, to address this extraordinary intolerance of diversity. (Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and the author of the newly revised and expanded “Supremacists.” She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@ eagleforum.org.) |
