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Show 1UA Emery County Progress Castle Dale, Utah Tuesday August 6, 2002 Commentary Surrendering our Privacy from Cradle to Grave to do with the rest of decided to decision. with me the 'The letter help stuted that I had until April II, 1 !)(!!), to choose a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces or the choice would be made for me. I chose the Air Force, thereby file on myself. creating a four-yea- r During that time, my wife und I were married. Another file, at all levels. Honorably discharged in 19711, I returned to school on the (1.1. Dill. Regular checks und another file, this time with the Veterans Administration. Then eume kids, ear payments und u mortgage, all recorded in the annals of government at every level. When we declared our children on our first itemized income tax return, we were required to accept a ninedigit number for each of them as well. As our finances became more sophisticated, we hud to document all of our expenses for the IRS. The amount wx give to charily is known. So is the kind of car I drove for business last year and how many miles I pul on it. Of course, that was no secret, since it had to be licensed to be legal. The government knows more uboul my property than I do. T hey have ull the information on, my home, including its vulue - which they determine in order to charge me a fee for the privilege of living there. They know my race, gender, age. health problems, where I wus born, w here I live now, and how many guns I own. They know which church attend, what candidates I support and credit cards 1 carry. And u few years ago, w hen Dill Clinton was president and was a state leader in the Christian Coalition, I suspect that an FDI file w ith my nume on it was By DOUG PATTON really w anted my life. Soon, Uncle Sam The right of the people to he secure their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against imrcasonahlc searches and seizures, shall not he iolated, and no warrants shall issue, hut upon prohahle cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to he searched, and the persons or things to he seized." Amendment IV, U.S. Constitution hen I started Kindergarten in the fall of l!i::t, the administration of public schools was mostly a local matter. ( )l her than u record of my hirth five years earlier, little had prolmhly been recorded ahoul me at the stale or federal level. In I till I, when I was a sophomore in hi,'h school, several key events put me on the state and federal radar I screen. Like all got my drivers license, which was followed In short order hy the purchase of my first car, which, of course, also had to he registered with the state. in -- That year also secured my first pnyingjob. The federal government immediately issued me u curd with number on it. my very own was assured that it was not for identification purposes. It even said so right on the card. Soon, unother branch of the government, the I nine-dig- it I -- Internal Revenue Service, wanted to know exactly how much money I was making. Two yours later, I graduated from high school und headed off to college, w ilh a federally guaranteed student loan and a Selective Service draft deferment. 'INvo more files w ith my name on them. In 19(8, I decided to work fora semester and try to figure out what 1 how-man- among those illegally stored on White House computers. Soon, the newly created federal Department of Homeland Security will send spies into my home to observe and report. Now they want to 1 1 know which library books Im reading. After all the privacy I have forfeited in the last 50 years, you wouldn't think that it would bother me any more, would you? Well, it does. (Do i! Patton is a freelance coin in nist uho has served as a '. . sjeerh writer and pot icy advisor to federal, state and local candidates and elected officials.) ; .; A Criminal Red Herring in Corporate Reform whose image was exploited by By ERIK LUNA Watching the stock market these days is enough to make the average investor seasick. Americans have w eathered the turbulence of Wall dive Street before, but the Titanic-siz- e n of some firms has sent many stockholders scrambling for life presen ers. What has turned investor despondence into rage, howev er, are the ongoing revelations that some captains of industry w ere involved in eorporate shenanigans. Now people want blood-an- d in an election year, national politicians are more than eager to quench this blood thirst with tough rhetoric and legislation. Many of the recent well-know- HOMEMADE Peaceful ways of Life At some point in my lifetime someone thought ol the simple di aw mg of the smiley face." More recently another someone recognized that if you draw it with a wrinkle or two on the forehead cursing up, when it is turned upside dow n, it appears as a sad or. perhaps, angry face. I suggest that w e try turning some tilings wc find sad or irritating upside in our nund. Dus may-leato new discoveries of the meaning of those e cuts of how we can belter deal with them. Thich Nhat Hanh. the well known peacemaker, recommends smiling as the most basic thing an individual can do to make peace. Whatever else we w ill do to engender peace at home, in school, at work or in the wider world can only be eflcctive, if we are at peace with ourselves and yo be able to smile sincerely. We need to be aware of our feelings; what we do. or want to do, given those feelings. This awareness allows us to decide what is best and w ill be at peace as we act on the decision. So often we hear on the news of escalating violence some place in the world. When one person or group does be. Vi hat would happen if people, at all levels, when they perceive theyve, been mistreated, or others have been, would begin to escalate ways to show love? Each can take opportunities to be more loving toward those who aie close to us. family and Iriends. as well as anyone we meet. Thats w here a smiley face" comes in. Perhaps when we're hurt andor feel angry, we can think of that silly "smiley face before we give the sharp response to brother or sister, husband or w ife. etc. It can lead us to seek another, a peaceful way of dealing with the situation. Your family, as a group, might take time to reflect together on how to do it and what it might be like. How would it Icel? Try drawing the reversible face. Talk about which one you would like to have and Wc fear the violence of fire that is out of control and threatens home and life. On the other hand, when the energy of fire peacefully warms us and makes us comfortable, we welcome it. We've been thinking of love expressed in the symbol of a smiley face as the energy of peace' that each in your family can show forth rather than an increase of the energy of the wildfire of violence. That love warmth will be passed on to others. Lcttcro to All cubmicoions must f "- , f: should focus on pr ' tougher, offering both newfangled business crimes and harsher punishments for existing offenses. As Rep. Michael Oxley . e-- tar ti . I - I fI " ' . quipped, summary executions would gel about 85 votes in the Senate right now. Dut there are good reasons to be skeptical about the use of the federal criminal justice system as a tool of corporate reform. To begin with, most of the proposed changes would have little, if any, effect on the prosecution of white-collcriminals. Virtually all of the recent corporate misconduct can (and will) be handled with laws already on the books. No matter. The effectiveness of criminal legislation is often less important to politicians than the sound bites it produces. Recall Polly murder victim Klaas, the ar c .w. tun pnVutw pwiwQifMiiwwo Li d prior to puhiicction. 7L: t;w !;. i proposals address areas in desperate need of change, such as misleading accounting practices and the enduring problem of corporate selfdealing. Dut the sometimes hysterical calls for reform have now mov ed bey ond civil business regulation and into the arena of criminal justice. In his recent speech to Wall Street, President Bush proposed an increase in the maximum sentenee for mail and wire fraud, and called upon the U.S. Sentencing Commission to enhance punishment for corrupt executives. Since that time, federal lawmakers have fallen all over themselves trying to look even something violent, the most frequent immediate response is to be violent in return. And often dial return" is to be even more so! Or at least to threaten to By PAULA WELLNITZ issues , w. F. :ry Cct , . : expanded the power of federal ' prosecutors, giving them another toot to squeeze out information and guilty; pleas from defendants. With unique prosecutorial authority over penalty .. reductions and lenient rules of .. evidence at sentencing hearings, federal law enforcement needs more leverage in the criminal process like Arthur Anderson needs more shredders. The congressional propensity to criminalize and punish only obscures real scandals; Federal ' sentencing law is determined by an ' unconstitutional junior varsity Congress," the guidelines have drastically shifted authority from j udges to prosecutors, remaking the former into little more than rubber stamps during sentencing and defendants are being punished under ! support of campaigningpoliticians California's infamous Three Strikes sentencing law. Officials didn't seem to care much that "'Jhree Strikes was theoretiin cally deficient, enormously expen-siand downright cruel in some applications. Instead, most political candidates rode the misguided law-al- l y the w ay to elect victories. Consider also ( 'engross enactment of harsh punishment in the wake of the crack cocaine hy storia of the 1 980s. Although politicians pointed to their handiwork as o idcnco of their toughness on crime, the legislation has had little effect on drug markets. Indeed, the primary effect has been to l, inundate federal prisons with minority offenders. In a real sense. Hum, the recurrent use and abuse of sentencing laws for political gain, particularly by federal officials, represents an ongoing fraud on the American people. Quick fix solutions implicating the federal criminal sy stem help elect politicians, all of whom know (or should know) the limited and sometimes negative consequences of their latest , social panacea. More importantly, sentencing machinations for political ends have spawned a Moby Dick-siz- e red herring on the problems with punishment in federal courts. Unknown to many Americans, federal sentencing is controlled by a largely unaccountable and insulated agency, the U.S. Sentencing Commission. This fourth branch of government has assumed Congress' power to make criminal law and usurped much of the judiciary's traditional authority over criminal punishment. Through its enactment of mandatory e. ion-da- low-leve- sentencingguidelines, the commission has all but eliminated the ability of trial courts to mete out individualized punishment and simultaneously . , a confusing, l, mechanical process that treats people ' like widgets rather than human beings. Like most Americans who have lost their shorts over the past weeks and months, 1 have little sympathy for corporate executives who swindle hyper-technica- innocent investors and irreparably damage their companies and employ-- , ees to boot. But also lack compassion for political opportunists who ' use the criminal process as a means to capitalize on events. If members of Congress were really serious about their jobs and the sentencing regime erected under their watch they would stop tinkering with federal punishment for personal, electoral gain and start ; -e reform of a talking about broken penal system. (Erik Luna is ' associate professor of la w at the Ini versify of Utah and author of the Cato Institute study, 'Mis yu ided Guide I iiws:How the Federal Sentencing System Really ' Operates. ) 1 ' large-scal- -- i |