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Show 4A Emery County Progress Castle Dale, Utah Tuesday Aprill 0,2001 C OMMENTARY Warn WiiroM CONFUSED Play Time L By PAUL JACOB By JAMES L. DAVIS I have learned that there are basically three way s in w hich you can play with our children: You can play by their rules; you can play by jour rules; or you can attempt a meeting' of tin minds and try to negotiate a set of rules both sides can agree on. Of course negotiating those rules and making them stick is about as easy as negotiating a peace1 in the Middle Fast. I usually just plaj by my kids' rules, which can be fun. enlightening and dangerous. I highly recommend multiple insurance p rogram s when plajing by your childrens rules. Being the father of a boy and a girl I also have learned over the years that findingsomethingwe can all play together is a task borne in futility. To alleviate this problem we initiated a policy where one day out of the week is my daughter's day and another day is my son's. On their" day my children get to pick what we do for the evening, even thing from what we eat to what we play. Within reason, that is. Take note of that within reason" part. Always include the within reason" clause in any contract you make with your children, otherwise jou will find yourself making weekly trips to Disney land, the Oregon Coast, and to Australia to meet the Crocodile Hunter. The only other stipulation I make is that whatever we do, we have to do it together. During the summer months I can predict what my children will want to do with 92.7 percent accuracy. It usually involves beating the tar out of their father. This is where the three of us climb onto the trampoline and my two loving, caring children attempt to inflict me bodily harm under the guise of wrestling. It wasn't a big deal a few years ago when my children were smaller. would act like they were getting the better of me and they would be happy. But the thing is. I'm no longer acting. Duringthe winter months what my children want to play is a little bit trickier. When we started this My Day" policy a few years ago my son would normally want us to plav with action figures. We would unload his toy boxes of hundreds of action figures, divide them up and have action figure battles in the living room. This was usually great fun for my son and and somewhat of a drag for my daughter. That is because my son, since it was his night, insisted that none of the action figures my daughter was playing with could be in any way playing house. Theyre not playing house, theyre camping, my daughter would respond. To which my son insisted that the action figures must be fighting. They are fighting. Theyre fighting over who gets to pop the popcorn, my daughter would respond, at which point I would have to explain that it was her brothers night so we must play by his rules. Her night would come. When it did my daughter would again have us pull out all of the action figures, with their weapons at the ready and dressed in combat gear. Only this time they would sit down at Barbies house and watch the kids while Barbie went for a drive in her convert- Career politicians have plenty of cliches in their kit bag, ready to be deployed the moment anybody suggests democracy might benefit from term limits on their power. One thing they say, like a broken record, is "(Josh, look at the loss of institutional memory youd suffer if folks uho've been serving for decade after decade are forced to make way for fresh faces and fresh ideas. Of course, in the private sector, when a new CFO who never before stepped foot in the place nonetheless succeeds in making an unprofitable company profitable again, somehow he does that without having observed the firm firsthand for all the years it was going downhill. He lacks institutional memory, you could say. But he doesn't lack memory of how to do business, fix problems, and satisfy customers. Nor dot's the CEOs lack of institutional memory mean that the past of this particular institution must remain a blank page to him. He can learn about the history' of the place by employing a very effective and efficient tool. Its called researeh. Institutional memory is not a necessary condition of wise governance. Nor is it a sufficient condition. For example, only memory' of economic principles and politieal history, plus maybe a dash of common sense, could have prevented the legislature of Missouri from sloppily expanding a small program so that the budget for it spun out of control. But nobody there remembered anything about how the world works. So a program that was already costing $1.4 million a year now costs $10.7 million, and will cost more than $22 million next year. Missouri state representative Kenneth Legan, a Republican and alleged fiscal conservative, voted for the expansion himself. Now' he and others are scratching their heads and saying, gee willikers, if only theyd paid more attention to howr much the legislation would cost. Or take the electricity deregulation fiasco in California. The elephantine legislation purporting to deregulate the power companies was passed in 1990 ironically, in the very last session before term limits kicked in. The legislation was studded with mutually contradictory concessions to the power industry itself, consumer groups advocating price controls, and myriad other special interests wanting some mandatory regulation or other. In other w'ords, the electricity foster-grandpare- Q loot SMli6oiMioTOi8UNe Co6Y 81 5fc-u- S ITS NOT AND THE FOUR DWARFS STILL WHISTLING THE SAME SINCE TUe DISNEY I CSS JT nt market was not deregulated , at all. Instead a new' and chaotic regulatory' regime was imposed. Policy analysts who possessed some memory of how' markets work could have told us and did at the time that the electricity industry' in California was headed for a blackout. If you keep prices of a good or service artificially low; even as demand is shooting higher, while also preventing any more supply from being created, you are going to create shortages. And you are going to force prices to skyrocket. But nearly everybody in the California Legislature forgot about how the real world works. The goddess Mnemosyne has clearly deserted our institutionally saturated career politicians. What political leaders need in order to sen e the public w'ell is not endless institutional memory of whats been going on in a particular House or Senate chamber. Thats a matter of public record and can be looked up in a book. What they need is histori- cal memory. Political memory. Some kind of recall power w'hen it comes to matters of basic economics and basic ethics. They need to remember what its like to be at the receiving end of , policies that designed, pot to senre the common good, but to indulge thoughtless impulses or to 91-9- placate narrowWerests. They need to remember who theyre really working for. (Jacob is the national director of U.S. Term Limits in Washington, D.C.) 1 I ible. would endure this with barely concealed contempt. Which only made me look forward to those summer months when could go out to the tramp and have my children beat the tar out of me again. My son 1 HOME MADE In Touch with your Spirit Side By PAULA WELLNITZ Do you like music and dancing, singing, laughter and fun? Who doesnt? Some people may say they cant do some of the above, but they like them all. The activity of your family to be peaceful, caring and just, that w'e looked at last week, is one way each and all are showing they are in touch with their spirit aspect of self and uniting the energy from that connection with those of the rest of the family to make yours a nurturing, happy home. But this is not ahvays a serious, solemn thing. There is a place of course. Those who are in touch with their spirit are truly often seen as a very happy people. They know how to laugh, to have fun, to enjoy being with other people, as well as, be with themselves. So w hat feeling do you think people get when they walk into your home? Is it evident that people are happy? Do they feel accepted, welcomed which means receive hospitality? Do they find a playfulness; people who can enjoy one another? One who is in touch with and uses the energy of their spirit aspect finds that the world is much different than it is often portrayed. It doesnt mean there are not painful times and times when they cannot see an end to difficulty and problems. But there are other things and other ways of looking at the same thing that those not in touch with their spirit dont see. This can be said, the spiritual person has hope and trust. It reminds me of a poster on my wall that I keep upside down. Visitors frequently ask Why? Sometimes, even after they have read the message on it (that they have to do by turning somewhat upside down themselves to read) they still dont quite understand. Could be that a time spent contacting and living with their spirit would enable them to see this in a new way. -- w Emery Progress VOICE OF. EMERY COUNTY SINCE 1900 Administration Sylvia Nelson ClassifiedLegal Kevin Ashby Publisher Linda Thayn . Office Manager Darla Lee Circulation EDITORIAL James L. Davis Editor Patsy Stoddard Staff reporter Ryan Peacock... Sports writer Advertising Sue Mosher. ...Director Jenni Fasselin OFFICE Sylvia Nelson Display Patsy Stoddard Letters to the editor should focus on public issues rather than private personalities or entities. All submissions must be verified prior to publication. The Emery County Progress reserves . the right to edit letters not only to satisfy space constraints, but potential liability concerns. 11 Classified Receptionist Subscription Rates: 50 cents per copy; $22 per year delivered by carrier in Carbon and Emery counties; $27 in Utah; $30 out of Utah per year by mail. Office Ilours: Monday 8:00 to noon.; Tuesday - Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at 190 East Main, Castle Dale, Utah. Classifieds Deadline: Monday at 10:00 a.m. for Tuesdays publication. Fax (435) Telephone: (435) progress(a'etv.net. Publication No: (USPS issued once a week at Castle Dale, Utah. Periodical at 381-243- 381-543- 0747-212- postage paid Caatle Dale, Utah. Postmaster: Send change of address to PO. 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