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Show 4A Errery Courr, P:yes3 Cist-- e Die I'm "Lesiif Maj 29 2X1 Commentary Hang up the phone By JAMES L By PAUL JACOB Im a big fan of ports statistics. I hear about batting averages and home runs, how many touchlove to downs, etc. like those But some of the slats reported recently by the National are not so Taxpay ers Union DAVIS If I wm made the ruler of the world fur juM one day. .well, the world would be in a whole heap of trouble. But beside all that. would make a few chunks. Nothing too radieal mind ou. just some changes First, all politicians would have to go. I dont know where they would go. but since I would bo the ruler of the world. I wouldnt sweat the details. I d just want them According to a NTl study by Paul (iessing, when you tally up all the funding of stadium construction over the last decade, the taxpayer strikes out to the tune of $7.5 billion. That total could soon double if projects that are currently in the planning stage go forward. (iessing estimates that baseball stadiums typically receive a 71 percent subsidy of construction costs. "If this share were to hold true for New York City's planned facilities for the Yankees and Mets, each one of the Empire State's citizens would be forced to pay a S55 subsidy to the team owners or. enough to meet the Yankee payroll for 6.5 years and the Mets for 3 years. Amazing but taxpayer-subsidize- gone. The second change I would make would be. Im sure, the greatest lienefit to mankind since the invention of the electric nostril hair i j ! j i j I immediately outlaw all telephones. Not just cell phones, all phones. Take them all and put them wherever you put the politicians. Because I believe that tele- phones rank right up there with illegal drugs. They an addictive and evil. Telephones are also far more prevalent than drugs; they are in your house, in your car, strapped to your waist. They are technological leeches sucking your will to live without your consent or knowledge. OK. so maybe theyre not that bad...but they're close. Ierhaps if I really were made the leader of the world for the day I wouldnt actually outlaw them, but I would most definitely put some limitations on them. Not on their use, you would still be able to use them anywhere you wanted, but you would only be able to talk for a minimum of 5 minutes per day to any one person. Now that doesn't sound too unreasonable to me. I am painfully aware that my life is only slightly more interesting than watching the grass grow, but even when my life was exciting and new I could detail everything that happened in my day in just under 1.4 minutes. If it took longer than that, then I would much rather wait and talk to whoever Im talking to in person. On more than one oecasion I have gone home, checked my messages on my answering machine and found that someone elses answering machine has been talking to my answering machine. Then there's my favorite time in the evening when the phone will ring and I will answer it to find that on the other end of the line is a machine, asking me to wait for a real person to pick up. When the real person picks up the other end I find that this person is trying to sell me something, usually phone service. To me a telephone is like a tool, the same way a chain saw is a tool. Now I love my chain saw, far more than I love my telephone, but I don't take it with me everywhere, nor do I bring it out and start cutting things to pieces just because I can (although the thought is very appealing). If you have the desire to cut back on your telephone usage, but dont know how, then I have this suggestion: Just imagine that you are an international spy and that everything you say could be being recorded and that every moment you are on the telephone is one more moment your enemies could be digitally pinpointing your location. If you have a problem forcing yourself into this paranoid frame of mind, then I highly suggest you become a newspaper editor, it helps Immensely. But once youve adopted this new way of thinking, breaking your addiction to the telephone is relatively easy. POLITICALLY CORRECT By Tim Huber What? Are the cops going to Wait It's illegal to USE HAND-HEL- Drive beside me and watch? CELL D groovy. 1 remover. would Ysm. IPaiwir$ gpsinirasft tilto Ups CONFUSED PHONES d true. d subsidies of sports mushroomed in the 1990s. Their effect is only destructive. Even d municipalities that are to keep regular services, police departments and fire departments operating up to par are nonetheless splurging millions of scarce budget dollars on the enterprise. Inasmuch as bigdime sports will hardly grind to a halt without the subsidies, a more wasteful expenditure of local resources could not be imagined. It would be bad enough if we the taxpayers were clamoring en masse for these mammoth payoffs. But were not. Some may believe the flood of tax dollars poured into new sports stadiums sprang from some public mandate, says Gessing. but appearances are deceiving. Instead, a few Tax-funde- WELC0NE Suffolk j J . j j contractors, bond houses, and extreme fans have politically-connecte- d teamed up with politicians to stampede taxpayers into going along with these dubious schemes. In other words: once again, the general good is being sacrificed to special-interedemands, thanks to the career politicians and their st collaborators. And it's not as if teams are struggling. Between 1990 and 2000, the average Major League salary jumped 243 percent. The average National Football League salary increased 143 percent. Just the same, city taxpayers often have to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for just one stadium in a big city. Comparably large-scalprivate projects, which dont get the same tax subsidy, suffer a competitive making alternate disadvantage projects harder to fund and build. Something's not quite kosher here. Dont we already pay for tickets to e, get into the game? And if we watch To Count New York Well, This is I DON'T HoU CAN SEE ANT VoU'RE UNDER ARREST nuts. COPS. THEY PROVE IT? Y hard-presse- j CARS HERE IN m our sports on television, dont we already have to put up with the commercials that pay for the airtime? If team owners want our support, they should ask us to give that support voluntarily, not demand that it be extracted from our paychecks. As Gessing points out, the latter approach doesn't seem quite sport- - the time is nearing when we can begin to end welfare for the wealthiest, too. That sure w'ould be a home run. (Jacob is the national director of U.S. Term Limits in Washington, D.C.) ing. The fear, of course, is that teams will emigrate to other cities if governments don't hand them gobs of money. But the same end could be achieved simply by eliminating all such subsidies across the board and around the nation. Sentiment is fine, but sentiment alone is not sufficient to guide public policy. It seems unlikely that the political will to end the athletic blackmail can be mustered just yet. After all, our current President is a former coowner of a baseball team himself and past recipient of just such subsidies. Still, in recent years governments have made a start getting the poorest of us off welfare, a goal that once seemed politically impossible. Maybe HOME MADE Enhance Ones Spiritual Life By PAULA WELLNITZ Number 7, To enhance ones spiritual life, of the 10 Things to Do Before You Die is so important that to make it 7 seems pretty far down on the list. What I notice is that some of the other items listed are things one mustdo to enhance ones spiritual life. I was going to pick out those and list them here. Then when I tried to do so it seemed that most, if not all, of the others are directly related to Enhancing ones spiritual life. S why list them. But, there are other things one needs to do also on a regular basis to enhance ones spiritual life. As recognized by many people, the most essential thing is to be in touch with God, the All Holy, however one wants to refer to the Spirit Source. There are many different means by which people do so. Some ways are better for one person than another. The sad thing Is when one doesnt recognize the need to be open to ways other than what one already practices at the moment. What they learned years ago may not be as beneficial after many life experiences. There could be new ways of growing in spirit. That new way could be the need to take more time in a special place at or?. It could be home, or to be with others who are willing to share their experience of spiritual life so each can learn from the others. Or both of the above. Or something else. There is a spot on TV about giving mother a gift of an hour a day to read. Its a nice idea. This can be applied to time for doing whatever mother (or dad) needs to do to be in touch with their spirit aspect. Usually mother or dad have to eke out time at the beginning or end of the day to focus on their spiritual growth. As the TV spot indicates also, it takes cooperation between mother and dad if the time is to be during the regular daytime hours. Which wont be bad. There are wonderful couples out there who are willing to talk together about their spiritual lives and what each sees as their need. They then work out a plan, whether it is something they do together, or managing so each can do what heshe needs. This deliberate enhancement of spiritual life, once again, will be picked up by the children. 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