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Show Sunday, September 19. IW9, THE DAILY HERALD, Easi Timor distracts mm real problems population of 212 million. Yet the Clinton administration is threatening Indonesia over its internal problems with Timor. And the press seems to be about to go frothy over a place I venture to say few could find on a map. In the meantime, important topics get ignored. We should be focused on the immigration crisis. Loose laws allow about 1.2 million immigrants per year. There should be a moratorium, This immigration at this level at this time has a lot of negative consequences on the labor market, the environment, on welfare and crime and education. We should be focused on ' the agricultural crisis. Even some government officials are saying American farms are on the way out. That would be a disaster. A country this large cannot afford to be dependent on imports to feed its people. We should be focused on the defects in the economy that are causing a widening gap between rich and poor and squeezing the middle class. the Dutch (West Timor) and the Portuguese (East Timor). When the Republic of Indonesia was created in 1950, West Timor became part cf Indonesia. East Timor remained a Portuguese colony until a brief civil war in 1975. A leftist outfit won, and the Indonesian army came in and took the eastern half. It has been Indonesia ever since. More to the point, America2is should no more care whether it's Indonesian or independent than they cared whether it was Dutch and Portuguese. It's just none of our business. This sudden interest on the part of the Charley Reese The new "crisis' some pols and ' pundits want news-medi- a you to Forget us and think about is Timor, it. It's unimportant to none of our business, Timor is an island, about .13,000 square miles, very 'mountainous, long but narrow. Its people grow rice, coconuts and coffee, and raise some cattle in a few stretches of grassl- United States in settling nic squabbles in .(v eth- places smells like dead fish to me. and. It was once divided between OUR LOGICAL interest should be Indonesia, which is 700,000 square miles with a THE STOCK-markeuphoria, to anyone who knows et American economic history, is an ominous, not a hopeful, sign. We should be focused on the fact that increasing numbers of Americans in the middle class can afford neither lawyers nor illness high costa in both areas leaving more and more people out in the cold. We should be focused on the decline of government educa- tion and either seriously reform it, which is probably impossible, or abandon it, which is quite feasible. We should be focused on the military crisis, in which a and stripped-dowmilitary is wearing out its equipment and its people. WHETHER WE like it or not, Medicare and Social Security are here forever, short of a revolution, so Congress ought to get busy and seriously repair the defects in both programs. n As for Timor, over-utilize- d Charley Reese is columnist with Canyon entry fee best recreational investment Editor's note: Tfie Daily Herald recently asked its readers if they supported the fee demonstration program in American Fork Canyon. Out of 222 people who voted in our Web page poll, 121 were against the fees, 85 were in favor and 16 were unde- Grant Mildenhall American Fork . , cided. Here are some of their ', i cost-effectiv- e Doug Anderson com- Pleasant Grove Despite the (neglected) responsibility of Congress to properly fund the Forest and Park Service, the money just doesn't trickle down far enough to make a i difference in our local canyons. So the people who use the canyon have to take that is, we up the slack must pay to play. $25 for an annual pass to American and Tibbie Fork, Hobble Creek Canyon and all those areas, Doral Graff Orem Fork Canyon is the best and most recreational money I've ever spent, and I'll pay it as long as I need to. ments: ; J v Not public's will We attended the public meeting. Many a ttended that meeting. None were for the fees. The fees happened anyway. June Carpenter Pleasant Grove Rather pay more taxes I voted against this fee when it was introduced, and I have not been back to American Fork Canyon since. I go to the canyon to get away from regulation. I'd rather have the tax added somewhere else so it didn't spoil my visit to the canyon. Like the improvements I think it's a good thing to have a fee to go up the canyon and improve the area they have already done in American Fork Canyon, and I am in favor of what they are doing. Help spread the money out of our area to handle Timpanogos Even if you aren't an intellectual, you get thinking big thoughts sometimes. That's me. One of the or questions thoughts It's Congress' fault I don't support the American Fork Canyon. The main problem, as I see it, is our congressmen. Congress is taxing us way too much. With all the money they take from us, they give it to other countries in the world, plus pork barrels to get themselves reelected. I think our taxes should be kept and spent here in the United States, the good old U.S.A, That way we could afford to keep our state parks and federal parks open. Vernon Baugh Springville f MY TURN grand-schem- e that comes to me most often is whether or not the human race has changed for the better in a hundred or a thousand years. We're taller, healthier and we live longer, but are we better people than our ancestors, or are we the same people with more toys to play with? It seems to me that each generation is kidding itself if it thinks it is better, happier or more civilized than previous generations. We believe, in the recesses of our brains, that the human race is more civilized than it used to be. The trouble is, just when we get comfortable with that idea, some event occurs or some nut comes along to make us doubt it. THE MINUTE w- get thinking that most people in the world are nicer to each other than people were when the Romans were throwing Christians in the pit of the Coliseum, a Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein or Milosevic comes along and we return to the old feeling that the basic character of mankind hasn't - the Orlando Sentinel. His column appears Sundays. - Page All Are we really civilized? that's Indonesia's problem. Provo, Utah improved at all. The doubt has come to me many times over the years. When I read about the Tutsis and the Hutus killing each other in great numbers in Rwanda and when the Serbs slaughtered the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the thought came to me again. Now come the killings in East Timor. The question is almost too difficult to consider and I wish I could get it out of my mind. We must have improved ourselves in a lot of ways. Feeding, clothing and housing ourselves no longer occupies all our time. We have many more opportunities to participate in activities that interest or amuse us as work or play. Andy Rooney . The caveman spent full time just staying alive. When the caveman you never hear of had appena cavewoman dicitis, he suffered great pain for days or weeks, then died at age 27 after his appendix burst and spread the infection through his body because there was no such thing as penicillin. While the caveman lay dying, he could not enjoy the relief of watching Andre Agassi win the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament because there was no television in his cave. No heat, either. He couldn't go to the refrigerator for a cold beer or get himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on pre-slice- d bread. We know we have it better than that. What we don't know is whether or not we're nicer to each other than the cavemen were to the other men and women in the cave. THERE'S NO question we our lives with more pleasure and less discomfort than our ancestors. My grandfather was smarter than I am but I must know a million things he never knew because there's more information available about everything and it's distributed better. Computers have expanded the knowledge available to us the same way the printing press did. Life is better. 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