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Show Friday, February 8, 2008 DAILY HERALD AS Editorials EDITORIAL Oaig BOARD Dennis, President & Publisher Randy Wright, Executive Editor Jim Tynen, Editorial Page Editor IN OUR VIEW Free the Lawn Lady! nn he trial of the cen- or at least it tury seems that way is slated to start day in 4th District V Court in Orem: the prosecution of the "Lawn Lady," Betty Perry. We think Orem should have remembered the old adage: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. It ought to put a halt to this travesty before the city rises again to its previous status of international laughingstock Perry, 70, was arrested in July when Officer Jim Flygare of the Neighborhood Preservation Unit came to her house to issue a citation for a dead lawn. The police version is that she wouldn't cooperate and tried to get away. She says she was merely going to call her son. Police claim she stumbled when he attempted to handcuff her; she says the officer pushed her. She suffered cuts and scrapes, and was arrested. Orem of ficials seem to have been dimly aware that bloodying an old woman for having a brown lawn and then dragging her off to the slammer looked bad. They apologized and investigated the incident. But in the end they went ahead with prosecuting her on two misdemeanors: a zoning ordinance charge and interfering with a legal arrest. i Some say Perry's brown lawn is so unsightly it could drag down property values. Well, if unattrac-tivenes- s is grounds for imprisonment, Utah County will have to to house expand its jail again the owners of many a slightly dingy Orem bungalow, not to mention people who own the strip malls spewed along the length of State Street. Then there are the details of an armed officer of the law confronting a woman of 70. We're not saying all women of a certain age receive a "get out of jail free card." But police must use common sense in dealing with someone who is plainly not a threat to the community. Here's one fact that also needs to be emphasized: Perry was quite right in going to call her son (or lawyer). The elderly are often targets of scams, and police sometimes throw their weight around (literally, in this case). If she were your mother, you wouldn't want her signing anything until you could get there. Going through with this trial e situation, puts Orem in a as a letter writer pointed out in these pages. If it loses, after all this, it will look even dumber than it does already. A court victory, however, won't end the ridicule: The public will just add the prosecutors and the jury to their scorn. The case has snowballed from Speaking of juries juries hold there. Nearly 100 prospective juthe ultimate power. A judge may rors were called and had to plow instruct the members of a jury as to their duty, but in the end, they through a questionnaire with 1 15 questions. Up to 20 witnesses could can decide whatever they want, testify over three days. Some mur- and there's virtually nothing that der trials aren't that complex. anybody can do about it. Perhaps we'll see a new infusion of comLooking at the various ratiomon sense in Orem by a jury of nalizations put forward for the Betty Perry's peers. prosecution only highlights the It's not too late, even now, to city's absurd behavior. City prosecutor Andrew Peterson said the avoid the circus. Orem could go to Perry's defense team Moncity couldn't take Perry's age or sex into account, because it day morning and acknowledge some obvious truths: She should has to treat all citizens equally. Nonsense. Of course all citizens never have been arrested; her should be treated equally in a injuries were the officer's fault; era! sense, but law enforcement, she shouldn't have been thrown to be rational, must also take into in a cell; and the city should have account the unique circumstances found another way of dealing of each case. Every day, police, with the problem. lawyers and courts treat citizens early, Orem should have exdifferently, based on a million dif- tricated itself from this mess long ferent factors, and rightly so. ago. As for the specifics of this situSetting Perry free will not result in a crumbling of police auation, let's start with the law at the root of this. It mandates that thority or a wave of lawlessness. in a desert in the summer during On the contrary, we expect people will learn from Orem's jackbooted a fairly dry year lawns must be green. Right there law enforcement and keep their kept we should see some discretion. lawns watered from now on. golf-cours- e MEDIA VOICES Notes on textbook costs costs, and students often cannot sell the books back to bookstores once the shrink-wra- p has been removed. Publishers can get away isn't the only expense Tuition many recent college with these shenanigans because insolvent. Textthere's a fundamental disconnect in the textbook marketplace: The ? books are also to blame. Textbook prices have been ris- people paying for the books (the ing rapidly in recent decades, in- students) are not the ones chooscreasing at more than 2 12 times ing them (the teachers). Several state lawmakers in the rate of inflation from 1986 to 2004, according to a Government Maryland have recently introduced Accountability Office report. At bills to correct this market failure. the University of Maryland at Col- Their legislation is lege Park, the average student but deeply flawed, and some provispends more than $1,000 a year sions threaten to curtail professors' on textbooks equal to about 20 academic freedom. Better ways to percent of tuition, according to the reduce costs while allowing profesMaryland Public Interest Research sors to use their best judgment in designing curricula are included in Group. There are several reasons that a broader bill on higher education textbooks are so costly. For one, that is up for a floor vote Thursday even though there have been no in the U.S. House of Representamajor advances in fields such as tives. That bill would require pubcalculus and elementary phys- lishers to disclose pricing in any ics in decades or even centuries, promotional materials they send to publishers still phurn out new edi- professors, thereby injecting a contions of textbooks on these sub- sciousness of cost into professors' jects every three or four years. choices. It also would require pubThe changes are typically super- lishers to sell unbundled versions ficial, but they prevent students of their products and to disclose from being able to purchase used, these packaging options and reviolder editions. Publishers also fre- sion htetories in all materials sent to quently bundle unwanted addi- professors. Finally, it would push tional materials such as faculty members to list required and study guides with textbooks. course materials before courses Professors rarely assign these start, so that students could shop extra materials, which drive up around. From the Washington Post, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008: CD-RO- W0IH6R TRAP M mite mmiuiNeoFvefmx. Whose money is it? writing in response to Clara-ly- n Hill's opinion piece where she "Paris advocated keeping the Hilton" tax. Ms. Hill's argument that it is only the "very wealthy" that pay this tax is reminiscent of the arguments for the income tax that was instituted early in the 20th century. It too, was only to affect the "very wealthy". We can see how this tax has grown to what it is I am d today. The very idea of a death tax is immoral. Remember, these people have already paid taxes on their income all of their lives. The people this tax really hurts are owners of small to medium-size- d businesses and farmers whose assets can easily run into several million dollars. Upon their deaths, the heirs of these business people and farmers face the prospect of having to sell the businesses in order to pay this tax. Warren Buffet, a "very wealthy" advocate of the death tax, buys up a lot of these businesses. Just because someone is "very wealthy" doesn't mean the government has the right to steal a large portion of their money when they die, no matter how worthy the cause for which the money will be used. Let the wealthy do with their money what they will; it is, after all, their money. I David Jolley, Pleasant Grove One way ee&i warns? J hk S'..:-:Ai- in Utah will be better than the national I Doug Austin, average, but it still will not be as good Mapleton as the last few years. The legislature needs to think twice before it gives the teachers union another raise and Thanks, road crews makes other budget commitments it As I was taking my daughter up the will have dip into the rainy day fund to steep hill to Timpview on yet another pay for in future years. i William Whyte, very snowy morning, I was reminded of how grateful we are to those who Orem have worked many long hours countless times this winter making sure our WTC questions roads are clear and safe to travel on. In December, physicist Dr. Steven Thanks to our winter road crews for Jones announced he discovered enabling our lives to go on no matter what Mother Nature sends our way! thermite chips in the W,ord I Sue Curtis, Trade Center dust. You can watch his Provo announcement at httpyjonesthermite. estate planning Thank you, thank you, thank you for your Jan. 25 op-e- d telling us that the federal government, and presumably the state governments, are justified to tax an individual's accumulated earnings after the individual's death. That this money represents earnings for which he or she has already paid income taxes does not matter to the writer because we can call it an "estate tax" as though those earnings belong to some legal entity that had no association with the efforts of the individual through whose effort the wealth was earned. With that logic, the government may then by power of law subsequently confiscate through additional taxation to satisfy, as the oped states, "the necessary and positive social value" of helping "a developmen-tall- y delayed child" rather than "serving margaritas to a rich heir" such as Paris Hiltoa Inasmuch as the op-e- d writer and individuals seem to know best how to spend other people's money, perhaps we logically should just ask the government to confiscate all our money and then, through a bureaucracy, return to us what they determine we require to live and prevent us from spoiling our children. I, for one, certainly don't want my children to be found sipping margaritas unless I can sip with them. At the risk of sounding too sarcastic and disagreeable I have to concede that many of us would like to "forget what their estate planning attorneys look like" even though 1 think the best way to accom- - , It is ridiculous for the state legislature to suggest that there are budget surpluses when there are billions of dollars in needed road and infrastructure improvements that are always delayed. Anyone who drives on thru Utah County can tell you that. Traffic grinds to a halt multiple times every day. It should have been widened years ago, but it will still be years before it happens. Instead they keep pirating money out of road funds to throw it at the education bureaucracy in a vain attempt to appease the endlessly whining teachers union. Now, on top of the fat raise the union got last year, the legislature wants to give them another one this year. This is poor planning based on revenue projections that are not going to continue. The good revenue streams of the last couple of years were based on a temporary construction boom based on an influx of Californians. Not only isthatnotgoingtolastforever.it notlong.com. The chips are not very abundant, but they are easy to spot because of their bright orange-re- d color on one side, and can be aggregated with a magnet. Four samples being studied show the redgray chips. Outside labs are now checking to confirm the thermite. Even if was just stored in the buildings, that in itself calls for an investigation, plus shouldn't the insurance companies be red-gra- y Surpluses illusory like-mind- nano-thermi- -. interested? The media ignore or try to label anyone nuts who considers anything but the official story, that attempts to explain how the collapses were initiated. After collapse began, each lower floor would have to resist and collapse, resist and collapse. How long would you expect that to take per floor? Two seconds? One second? According to NIST, Tower 1 collapsed in only 11 seconds and Tower 2 only nine seconds. If fires can pulverize and collapse steel buildingsfct free-fa- ll speeds, then why do demolition companies use ex- ended a year ago. The inventory of plosives? unsold homes in Utah increases every Forget who did it and why that is day; home values are already dropping conjecture. I just want to know if the again; and the country is likely headed evidence is strong enough to discuss the evidence for explosives in the into a recession. The low unemploymedia and inform the citizens. Speculament in Utah was also based on the tion is not too helpful without a formal temporary construction boom. The trial or. investigation with subpoena unemployment rate is increasing and is going to get orse as more people power. in construction and I Robert J. Stevens, industries lose their jobs. The economy Highland MALLARD biiii . plish that is to abolish the estate tax. to forget about Garry Trudeau DOONESBURY FOROBtm-KSa- LETTERS lose-los- ' THERdS ASH WEPNESPA9 IKS FILLMORE Bruce Tinsley 4 Mr IrvLUv- - Asm ttew you ve auuMYupFw'. mz fifty reresi I |