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Show r J ; ' .V . The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand Page 2 The UTAH Independent May 31, 1973 mm The Independent 1 Dedicated To The Look Af This - Constitution, Liberty, Morality, and Truth Hlls a loot M anc.Wr culture. W ck in rust loth Century whith frcfiectty , tav been part: Criminals tt rnurorrers tta 0rkrfC r & Killed helpless i This chapter- - a l ! KERSHNER-ROW- COMMENTARY E II ? Ml' OWEN Howard Kershner ' Edward Rowe LETS REINFORCE THE MORAL LAW The BERKELEY (Calif.) DAILY GAZETTE tells of the raping of a blind girl in the halls of Berkeley High School and of another girl being raped on the floor, screaming for help while passing students ignored her. The same paper tells of disorder in the classrooms, of students playing records, drinking and smoking marijuana while paying little, if any, attention to classes. Nevertheless, they are graduated. They are not being educated, so why should the taxpayers burden themselves to keep such students in luxurious idleness? Increasing numbers of persons admittedly carrying marijuana or other dangerous drugs are being apprehended by the police only to be freed by the courts on the flimsiest of technicalities. This is not only true of drug offenders, but of those committing other crimes. In many cases there is no dispute as to the facts. The individual is clearly guilty and often confesses his guilt. Nevertheless, finely spun, highly sophisticated rationalization is advanced by many of our judges as reasons for freeing them. Even in rare cases of conviction, the sentences are so short and parole so easily and quickly obtained that there is little deterrence to further criminal action. The cost of some of these trials sometimes runs to a million dollars or more. Our solid, substantial citizens are being taxed ever more heavily to coddle criminals and support the indolent. As the burden on the responsible portion of society grows heavier to care for the incompetent and irresponsible portion, there is grave danger of the loss of freedom and the coming of authoritarian government in order to avoid the chaos that seems to be overtaking our society. Freedom, free government and prosperity stem from the moral law. If we hope to retain our privileges and our wellbeing, we must begin again to reemphasize the Ten Commandments as the basis of civilization. METRO MEWS READERS OUTLOOK Life ACREAGE LEASE-BA- CK Value Editor: Is one human life any less valuable than another? Should mere human beings exclusively decide that the desperate killer of a policeman or a prison guard must receive the death penalty, while the diabolical murder of a child, for instance, requires no such punishment? Although the aforementioned theory is the approaching trend in our state legislation, this is no solution to the crime of homicide. Such a practice would imply that ending the life of a law officer, perhaps during the showering gunfire of a prison escape attempt, is a more atrocious criminal act than would be the senseless murder of any other person. Unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought, is the definition of murder in the California Penal Code. The code does not specify a particular human being needs to be killed before the crime is considered murder. Either we use the penalty of capital punishment for all homicide or we use it for none. There can be no compromise when it involves human life. Joren Miller Palm Springs, bjiJoHWan Calif. FAULTED AS FARM RELIEF by Jo Hindman It is difficult to understand how a farmer can be helped by taking away his ownership of the land he tills. And yet, legislation to do that has reached the bill hopper in California. The measure calls for the Food and Agriculture Director to set up procedure for the purchase of land from farmers and to lease back the same land to the same farmer. Guidelines impose these limitations: One hundred sixty (1 60) acres is the maximum allowable purchase by the director. Half or more of the farmer's must income farming. He would come from lease the land per acre per year, proceeds going to a school fund. As tenant or sharecropper, he would continue to grow crops. If he didn't, he would forfeit the land. The state could lease it to $1 others. Amazingly described as a practice "to promote small farms", the entire ploy would be turned over to a director appointee, a manager who would write the regulations ("non-laws- that would control ") the plan. The idea BRICKBAT Living Issues, Buena Park, California 90620 Peace a is short pause between identification. wars for enemy Dear Editor: We have now received two am copies of your paper. from a it presuming that was gift one of my Aunts. Please do not send any further copies to us. We are not Mormons, we do not wish to read your paper, and personally feel that it is filled with badly misguided garbage. If we wish to know how the world is going, we can read a mutitude of newspapers, yellow sheets or the Bible all of it, not I Clemens Kirchner The JU Independent The Utah Independent is published by the Utah Independent each Lake City, Utah 84115. Yearly Tuesday at 2459 Major Street, Salt in the United States. subscription rate is $6.00 per year by surface mail I as far as it is translated properly. Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter. do not wish to be on any kind of Mormon mailing list. Very truly yours, I Send change ol address forms and correspondence fo 2459 Major , Salt Lake City, Utah 84115 GDV Utah's Largest and Fastest- - Growing Subscription Weekly Bayard, N.M. Editor's Note: Many Mormons feel the same way. land, especially in U.S.S.R., are well known. Those truly interested in helping farmers can perform a real service by correcting present assessing practices. Profits that a farmer might realize are eaten up by taxes. Today's high property taxation is based on faulty assessment premises. Land is being unfairly taxed according to its "highest and best use" as determined by a tax assessor's shifting criteria usually emanating from the state finance director's office; he revenue tailors to cover spending. use market value in tax assessing is to hitch property taxes to a political sky rocket. To be Fairly, land should be taxed on a unworkable on several fronts. Agricultural: The type of land it is dictates the type of crop unfeasible to grow cheap crops on high value land. when acquired by the state, the land would come off the tax rolls after purchase, increasing the tax burden on others, The absurd $1 .per acre lease fee is too nominal to defray the high cost of schools. From the economic angle, the 160 acres ceiling is marginal when considered in light of today's high costs of machinery, equipment, land, labor and taxes. To "make a living" on that relatively small parcel of land, a family's subsistence level would need to be very low with few "service consumption" basis, i.e. to furnish the money to cover the services the land uses. Agricultural use carries a low ratio. For instance, farm acreage uses up no costly "school services." Yet taxes on farm acreage carry the intolerable burden of school costs. A valid "service demand" of farmland would be, say, taxation for the upkeep of the county roads. The devices which purport to be relief for farmers are rather tax shifts, bureaucracy's from the farm palliative, population to the city population, or some other "goat" dreamed up for the purpose. The army of tax spenders (bureaucracy) feeding off the real producers of real wealth is the taxpayers' most formidable problem. Cut spending. Cut taxes. appears to Tax-exempt- 796 0 Crescen t A ve. owned ed farmer-entrepreneur- s. "wants". Politically the measure would enable the state to tattoo the land with perpetual and infinite land use controls. It would take an act of the legislature by statute to return the land to private ownership, and even then the land use controls would run with the land. The crop failures on state- - demand-in-servic- es non-produci- The ng rights of one man end when they transgress on the rights of another man. . |