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Show 4 Thursday January 30, 2014 OPINION www.dailyutahchronicle.cor ► U.S. should recognize value of the labor force ROSE 0 JONES Columnist Li L ibrarians, sanitation workers and firefighters are some of the most important public civil servants in the United States. Over the past three decades, our Congress — both on the state and national level — has been the least important. Yet more than half of our U.S. Congress members are millionaires, according to a report released by the Center for Responsive Politics, and the other public servants barely make enough to live comfortably. There is something seriously wrong with this picture. With the 2014 State of the Union still on the burner, it has become even more evident that those who live large on our tax dollars should get a massive pay cut, or even impeachment. And the sooner the better. When I was a police officer, I watched my firefighter friends and colleagues race into buildings fully engulfed in flames without hesitation. Most of these heroes take on second jobs to fund camping and fishing trips for their families. Meanwhile as the two houses of our nation burn, Congress takes a break at a five star retreat, and less than a month after their extended and luxurious winter vacation. Congress doesn't pay for their trips — the lobby groups that own them do. I owe the success of my education to the city librarians who tirelessly assisted me in finding credible and appropriate sources to expand my knowledge. The amount of time and intelligence required to be a librarian and to know about every available book is astounding, and the pay is underwhelming. I wonder if any of our national representatives have spent time in a library, because the information and diction spilling from their mouths certainly isn't correct or credible. Then again, they are programmed to simply read the scripts provided by special interests groups who shower them with million dollar favors. The sanitation workers are probably the most crucial and under-recognized civil servants in our country. When we tow out our waste bins each week, we take for granted the workers who facilitate its disposal for us. I can't imagine what it would be like if the landfills closed and sanitation control suddenly stopped. The wages paid to these vital workers is shameful. Congress shovels out more garbage than any other U.S. entity, in words and actions, yet the majority of them are either millionaires or close to it. With all of the wealth dripping from the top and a congressional body that cares nothing for human rights and knows little about writing balanced laws for domestic or foreign policy, it seems we will soon see the damage of our nation's imposed stratification. Top heavy structures are not sustainable. And we are without a king, because the three branches of our constitutional tree are drowning in plutocratic campaign funding, which renders President Barack Obama powerless. If everything we know as normal screeches to a halt in the United States, and our millionaire-club Congress realizes money can't save them from everything, it will be a rude awakening. The civil servants who have been taken for granted will be the ones to restore order in our country. Maybe then the Americans who kept voting the gold digger Congress into office will stop, think for themselves and grasp that we don't have to accept a two-party system which dictates who will be put on the voting platform. We are Americans, and we have what it takes to establish what we need — to bring back leaders who are willing to serve us for a wage earned by any other hardworking civil servant. letters@chronicle.utah.edu ARASH TADJIKI/The Daily Utah Chronicle Two-year phone contracts trap customers KATHERINE ELLIS I Opinion Editor 've had my smartphone for one week, and I don't know how I lived without it before. Yes, you read right. Before last week, I was barely functioning with an LG Cosmos 2, a phone that cannot even be purchased anymore, while its upgrade, the LG Cosmos 3, begins at a whopping .99 cents with a new contract. A slide-out QWERTY keyboard and quite a bit of embarrassment haunted me throughout the entire two-year contract I was chained to this relic. Technology is innovating at an alarming rate, and as a result, cellphone companies can no longer afford to lock customers into twoyear contracts. Flashback to the last few months of senior year when I signed with my provider and upgraded to the LG Cosmos 2, thinking it was a sound decision. Not even three months later, after realizing my mistake, I found out that unless I wanted to pay a $175 cancellation fee ($350, if it had been a smartphone), I was stuck with my phone for a year and nine long, shameful months. During that one year and nine months, companies exploded onto the scene, offering the world more than just one option for a smartphone. Now more than ever there are a multitude of options, allowing for some serious customization depending on what you want out of your device. It is, after all, more than just a phone. A GPS, e-book reader, social media hub, camera, planner, organizer, music player and translator. And those are just a few things I use my new smart- phone for. However, a few short years ago, zdnet.com , a business technology website, rated the following phones among the top io for the year: the Samsung Galaxy SII, the Motorola Droid Bionic, the HTC EVO 3D, the HTC ThunderBolt and the Apple iPhone 4. Personally, I haven't ever heard of any of these except the iPhone 4, and now we're blown through four newer models up to the iPhone 5s. People cannot be expected to keep the same phone for a full two-year contract without the device becoming outdated before the contract is up. That being said, T-Mobile is one of the few carriers who has caught on and is trying to do something about it. They have offered to pay for the early termination fee, provided you sign on with them. Verizon has come up with `Verizon Edge,' allowing you to split your payment for the phone into smaller increments with no contract. Should you want to switch at any time to another phone, you just have to pay at least half of the phone off. The way the payments are broken up, it averages about a year with that phone, then you can switch, no hassle. While these are just two examples of companies attempting to change policies, some still haven't come up with a solution. And the aforementioned companies are by no means perfect. There are still qualifications that need to be met and fine print that needs to be read before one can upgrade their device. With the rate that technology is changing and the increasing dependency on being "connected" all the time, it is in a company's best interest to change policies to a faster upgrade, which in turn affords customers like me the luxury of writing their opinion columns from their mobile phone. letters@chronicle.utah.edu Homeless deserve respect, not unfair legal measures GEORGE ZAMANTAKIS Columnist T o some, capitalism—extreme social class stratification and the exploitation of workers and workers' rights—is an inherent part of the world. Reality is only the current system we live in. For example, there are questions about the privilege behind banning a homeless man from City Creek for panhandling. However, the reality is that humanity has created the current system, and we as a collective have the power to transform it into something new by questioning social paradigms and then restructuring. A question comes to mind: Do we as a society have the right to not feel guilty when we are buying a new jacket, a new phone case or the latest iPad as other members of our society are struggling to live? The argument is that the homeless frighten away customers at shopping malls. Once the customers are scared away, stores shut down. As stores shut down, people lose jobs. Then, ultimately, we fall into some sort of economic downfall. The entirety of this debate is based around the homeless as somehow infringing upon the rights of the more privileged. The conversation veers away from discussing the ways in which capitalism creates a stratification of the classes so that the homeless and extremely impoverished are not mere abstractions but a reality. As a homeless population built throughout the United States' history, we began to see the rise of anti-vagrancy, anti-loitering and anti-panhandling legislation. RORY PENMAN/The Daily Utah Chronicle Somehow, being exploited by the current economic system was not enough for lawmakers — you must also be punished for not having the "biological" and "psychological" capacity to keep a job. According to the Huffington Post, councilman Cameron Runyan of Columbia, S.C. said, "this problem has plagued us for a generation and a half at least" — this "problem" being the homeless. Lawmakers such as him see the homeless as a social disease, and like all diseases, they seek to heal themselves of the illness. What is remarkable though, is that they address being homeless as problem, so they criminalize it. In reality, they could end homelessness by ensuring every citizen of this country has a job and is paid a livable wage. There are over three thousand people in Utah currently living without shelter. Of course, these are only the people who are being counted as they seek resources from places such as the Road Home. There are others who may go without resources or the ability to access them. In 2013, NPR found there were over 600,000 homeless on a given night — and the U.S. is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. The problem is not that there is not enough money to support those in need. It is not that this population is too lazy to work. The problem is that too many people walk past homeless individuals and see them as a threat. The rhetoric surrounding the homeless has switched from a population that deserves compassion, uplifting and help to a population that will rob, attack and murder if you cross them. However, the real threat is not that they are asking for money. The real threat is that people are too comfortable in their world of luxury, excess shopping and selfindulgence to recognize the need for critical transformation. letters@chronicle.utah.edu |