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Show 1 The Public Forum 1 lie Salt Lake Tribune, Pro-Gu- n Film The TV movie, The Right of The People, broadcast Jan. 13 was another antigun propaganda effort. But I must give credit where credit is due. The subtleness by which both sides of the issue were presented made the film worthwhile. It was the omissions, emphasis and ultimate conclusion that made it propaganda. The same film with a few changes would be a strong pro-gufilm. The film failed to emphasize that a citizen can only use a weapon, lawfully, in his own defense, or in the prevention of a felony committed in his presence, same as the police, which left the film without true foundation. The supermarket shoot-ou- t was legitimate. A felony was in progress. Then the film should have had one of the clerks in the supermarket hit his target (a reasonable possibility). The double miss was subtle propaganda designed to discredit the citizen n who would carry a gun. Then the film should have the character that drew his gun on the unarmed patron prosuted (intimidation with a deadly weapon), and finally, the film should show the true statistics of foiled robberies citizens. Then the film would be just as strong a film. Fair is fair. pro-gu- n E. DEAN CHRISTENSEN Richfield Forum Rules jtedPublic Forum letters must be submitexclusively to The Tribune and bear writers full name, signature and address. Names must be printed on political letters but may be withheld for good reason on others. Writers are limited to one letter every 10 days. Preference will be given to short, typewritten (double spaced) letters permitting use of the writers true name. All letters are subject to condensation. Mail to the Public Forum, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. Dam Big Decision An issue before the Legislature is the proposed Little Dell Dam. There is a vital decision to be made as to the engineering of that structure. As I understand it, there are two similar plans being proposed; one by the Army Corps of Engineers and the other by a private engineering firm. The federal plan will take nearly twice as long and cost nearly twice as much ($20 million more). However, it supposedly would save Utah a little money due to heavy federal government subsidies. With todays concern for deficit reductions, it is absurd to support the inefficiency of federal engineering fiascos. I would like to swim in Little Dell Lake before 1990. C. SHEPHERD First, Not Last I am disturbed our state legislators have not yet found the courage to make Martin Luther Kings birthday a state holiday. Not only should the day be a holiday, but there should be memorial services, paid for with state funds, and telecast to all areas of Utah. We owe that to ourselves, as Utahns and as Americans. Many Utahns, myself included, take great pride in pioneer ancestry and often pause to thir of those refugees who left all their dreams in a burning city in Illinois and built anc iher city here, in the heart of a desolate wilderness. How can we not see that all desolation is not physical, and that the wilderness of the spirit Dr. King faced so bravely is far more extensive and dangerous than the one our tamed? It seems to me the people of Utah, citizens of a state born out of flight from persecution, should be among the first to honor Dr. King's memory, and not the last. Universal Press Syndicate The term fascist is too loosely used, and for indefensible reasons tends to be confined to descriptions of heavy-handeactivity by governments deemed right wing. Thus Pinochet's government in Chile is fascist, as also is Stroessner's in Paraguay, but d Kha-dafy- 's and the Ayatollah's are something else, because of their loose psychological identification with populism. Which brings up the subject of labor unions and the lazy public acceptance of muscle power prevailing over human rights. One might reasonably stretch the term fascists to describe a kind of martial rigidity more appropriate to plebe year at West Point than to an open society of confident and mature people. SCOTT WARNICK Republican Parable The other day I was shopping at our neighborhood store when I noticed Norm Breeder, a noted Republican who represents everything our fine Republican Legislature stands for, coming into the store with his 12 children all dressed in matching clothes. They grabbed four shopping carts and began loading them. Somehow I managed to end up behind Norm in the checkout line. I noticed Norm's total was nearly $700. Norm handed the clerk a brand new $100 bill. The clerk reminded him the bill was $700. Norm said, But I cant afford that much. You wouldn't want my kids to starve would you? The clerk said, Im sorry, Mr. Breeder, but we cant give you what you wont pay for. Do you want to take some things back?" Norm said, No, I can pay. He then gave the clerk the $700 while saying to whomever was listening, I cant believe it, this always works with the teachers. BRYON S. NIELSEN Bountiful Sale Taxes Him The recent sale of Deseret Generation and Transmissions Bonanza power plant surfaces on an important issue the taxation and regulation of utilities. Sale of the plant, which was built with subsidies from the federal government, is strictly for the purpose of a tax write-of- f shameful. Shell Leasing will receive $500 million in tax benefits and about $185 million in interest benefits at a time when we are talking tax reform. Our lawmakers are trying to balance a runaway budget with decreasing revenues. DG&T also will lobby to change current law to make the property tax exempt in Utah. The Bonanza Plant, regardless of who may be its owner, should fall under the jurisdiction of the Public Service Commission. It should be taxed at the same rate as any other public utility. For the benefit of all taxpayers, we should put an end to this shameful manipulation of tax dollars. S.K. PELCH Sandy Gays Teach Lesson We all could learn a valuable lesson from the gay community in Ogden. The excommunication of Clair Harward (Tribune, Jan. 10) shows some religions would rather not be troubled with a person who is truly in need, but rather, turn their backs on him. The friends of Clair Harward have shown us what caring is all about, by taking him in and providing support for him. I think it is time all religions think twice about excommunications and decide if it's what Christ would do, or if He would be more tolerant, forgive us and welcome us back to His flock with open arms. FRANK L. THALLER Kearns But because I thought I saw a police officer and slowed down, I managed to get in his way. I surged forward officer or no officer and swung into the right lane. As it turned out, it wasn't a policeman. Mike Royko The fast truck now had an open road, and he moved forward. But when he got next to me, he slowed. Then he began drifting to the right, as if to force me off the road. I hit my brakes and he went by me. But he swung into my lane and dropped to my speed. For a few seconds I wasnt sure what he was trying to do. Then I glanced in my rear- view mirror and I understood. That other truck was now coming up behind me fast. And I could see that it was the same kind of truck same model, same paint job. They were obviously traveling together and were probably on the CB talking about teaching the jerk in the Chevy a lesson. I was the middle going to be part of a sandwich part. I decided not to join in their game. I swung to my left, intending to pass the truck and get as far ahead of him as possible, even if it meant doing 90. He wouldnt allow it. He swerved and blocked the left lane. And his partner came out to keep me from dropping back. By then, there couldnt have been more than 5 or 10 feet between my front bumper and a truck and my back bumper and another truck. I went back to the right lane. So did they. My wife said: My God, what's going on? I said: I think theyre trying to kill us. Now, if that sounds overly dramatic, it isnt. If a stranger came up to you on ',he The paralysis of Austin, Minn., is principally before the public eye. There the Hor-me- l plant struggles to stay alive. By all reports it is highly automated and efficiently managed. But it has been losing money, so that the alternatives became clear: either shut the plant down or reduce the overhead. This means reducing hourly wages and benefits, and the announcement last August that this would be done caused the strike (opposed, by the way, by the parent union of the United Food and Commercial Workers). A strike is a conventional means of consolidating opposition to decisions taken by management. But a strike has got to respect rights of others, and in Austin, strikers are physically threatening both outsiders who seek to accept employment with Hormel, and members of the local who would rather accept Hormels wages than continue unemmeat-packin- Oil -- Price Fall Is Good News, Despite What Experts Say The Washington Post The collapse of oil prices, despite the shock waves it is sending through the banking and energy industries, is a healthy development. It will lead to lower inflation and interest rates and act as a stimulus to economic activity in most of the world. WASHINGTON Such a free fall, to be sure, would hurt not only OPEC, but other producers including Great Britain and its North Sea partners, Mexico and other Third World producers, and domestic companies. But the wider comThird World munity of consuming nations and industrial that have suffered recession and high debt for the past 13 years because of the shocks, would begin to regain its health. oil-pri- The spectacular lapse that was news of the oil-pri- col- this week has been in the making for at least four years. But there were distinguished persons who promised us it couldnt happen or, worse, that it shouldnt be allowed to happen. A sharp drop in prices might be bad medicine, they said. On Dec. 28, 1982, after one of many OPEC meetings in Vienna revealed that the cartel might be losing its grip, Henry M. Schuler, director of energy programs for the Georgetown University Center for Stategic and International Studies, wrote in a Washington Post op-e- d piece: front-page- d It is also music to the ears of those of us who for several years have been insisting that the two oil shocks engineered by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1973 and 1979 had created revolutionary changes that made an collapse all but inevitable. This view of the oil world was largely hooted down by the establishment, which oil. The had a commitment to professional oil consultants who looked for oil to hit $90 to $100 a barrel and the banks and oil companies that listened to their advice (thirsting for such a bonanza) are weeping today: Prices, which shot up from $2 to $3 a barrel in 1972 to a peak of over $35 after 1979 crashed this week to below $20, off about $10 since November. There is no natural floor, said Washington oil analyst Joseph Lerner (among the minority who saw the downturn coming). Oil could easily go to $10. Others talk of a move down to no higher than $15. oil-pri- high-price- d Car -- Hating Truckers Drive Me Crazy Chicago Tribune Service Because I dont fly, I do a lot of crosscountry driving. So Ive developed a number of rules for getting there in one piece. And if I have a cardinal rule, its this: If a truck comes roaring up behind me, I get out of his way as quickly as I can. When I say quickly, thats what I mean. I slam the gas pedal down and flee to the next lane. While many truck drivers are courteous and professional, a certain percentage are psychotics who hate any and all cars and their occupants. They view us as a nuisance, a hindrance to their getting their load through in the fastest time possible. For all I know, they might hate certain makes of cars more than others. Or colors, or license plates. And I have no interest in antagonizing somebody who is revving up a machine thats 20 times as big as mine, at 70 or 75 mph, only a few feet behind my hip pocket. But no matter how careful you are, if youre on the road long enough, eventually you're going to make a mistake. A week or so ago, while crossing central Florida, I made one. And the memory of it still makes me reach for the Maalox. Traffic was light, the highway was smooth, and I was doing about 60 or 65. Ahead of me was a truck that was kind of dawdling. I pulled into the left lane to pass him. But as I drew even, I saw a car several hundred feet ahead parked on the shoulder. A mental alarm went off: Police. Radar. Instinctively, I took my foot off the gas. I didnt put on the brakes, but I slowed enough so that in a few seconds I dropped to the speed of the truck on my right, and stayed there. Then I heard the blast of an air horn. For a moment I wasn't sure where it came from. I was still looking ahead to what I thought was a police car. Then it blasted again. I looked in my rear-viemirror, and there it was, so close to my bumper that I couldn't see anything more than his huge grill. Apparently, the truck had been coming up fast, but at a distance, when I pulled out to pass. If I had kept going, there would have been no problem. All Fascist Unions? Perish The Thought Tribune Headers Opinions Nearly a Monday, January 27, 1W6 street and held a knife to your throat, you could reasonably assume that he was threatening your life. So, here were two men, using giant machines as deadly weapons, and threatening us with them. All I had to do was make a and mistake panic and hit my brakes one truck would have plowed me into the other. Two more times, I tried to get out and around. And both times they reacted quickly enough to keep me between them. Each time, the margin for error was only a few feet. I considered making for the shoulder. But it was narrow and if I skidded I'd be in a ditch on my side. Im not sure how scared I was. On a fright scale of one to 10, the night a couple of street punks stuck a gun to my nose, I was about a nine. So Id guess the trucks had me up to an eight. Then I got a break. The trucks were playing their sadistic game at about 45. This permitted a few cars to overtake us. I saw them in my side mirror. And as they went by, I snapped the wheel left, hit the gas and got on their tail. I figured that if the maniac in the front truck wanted to swing out and get me, hed have to take a piece of the guy in front of me, too. It worked. And in a few seconds, I was speeding well ahead of them and heading for the next exit. Now, I dont know if the drivers of those trucks see any of the papers in which my columns appear. Or if theyre capable of reading. But on the outside chance that you do read this, Id like you to consider what you almost did to a couple of total strangers. You could have killed or maimed us. And that's severe punishment for the crime of having unintentionally delayed you by a few seconds. I'm not going to preach to you about the way you should treat your fellow man even those fellow men who dont get out of your way fast enough. I'd just like to say that I sincerely hope that both of you and your mates practice birth control. Honest, we already have more than enough morons in this world. , We come to the inescapable conclusion that a durable oil glut and price collapse is impossible. Being essentially free of population-driven revenue requirements, the rulers of Saudi Arabia have enormous latitude in choosing either to maintain market share by reducing price or to maintain price by reducing production. At the same time, New York oil expert Walter J. Levy, former World Bank economist Hollis Chenery, and former Iranian finance official Jahangir Amuzegar writing in learned journals such as Foreign Affairs warned that falling oil prices were dangerous. Because high prices had induced conservation and provided the petrodollars for recycling to the debtor countries, they urged the West to strike a deal with OPEC to and the high preserve the status quo prices. Others, such as John Lichtblau of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation of New York, prayed for moderation. If OPEC could move together to assure a nice gentle slide, rather than abrupt price cuts, the world would be better off, Lichtblau argued. These views of the energy world were dead wrong, but they have been difficult to shake. As recently as Daniel Yer-gipresident of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, was still saying (while acknowledging a real drop of 40 percent in oil prices from 1981 to then) that the concentration of oil reserves in OPEC and in the Middle East . . . will eventually put the era of surplus behind us. But Yergin cant know what other oil reserves will be found. None of his group of experts has foreseen the great bulge of production since 1973. And when the era of surplus will end, nobody knows. But it wont be for a long time. Among the most perceptive oil analysts, active in dispensing their wisdom in 1982 and before, were S. Fred Singer, now of George Mason University, and Eliyahu Kanovsky, an economics professor with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Some dismissed expertise, assuming his Israeli connection disqualified him as an objective source. But the shrewd perspectives of these analysts have been borne out. They accurately forecast that the world's dependence on OPEC and the Middle East would diminish, not continue until the end of the century as the establishment experts saw it. Moreover, Kanovsky figured out what escaped Schuler: that the Saudis would become so dependent on their fabulous oil revenues that they would pump oil out, not store it in the ground. These forecasts of continued glut and price decline, reported in these columns and elsewhere, were largely ignored. The banks and the money markets went blithely on, betting that OPEC could hold out. and control the price. And we can expect to hear more of the same at this stage of the game. We will be told that, above all, we need stamid-198- non-OPE- C Kan-ovsk- g ployed. It is, of course, a very old story. During the newspaper strikes in New York City, which is the capital of labor union militancy, to distribute newspapers that actually got printed was to take ones life in hand. Tires were slashed, trucks burnt up, threats issued. They call it taking the law into one's hands. The local in Austin has called on the labor movement throughout the country to back its strike; concretely, to send the strik- ers money to make it possible for them to continue not to work for a living, and to boycott Hormel products manufactured in other plants. If this were to succeed, then workers at one plant would be doing their very best to inflict economic damage on fellow workers ' in other plants. Meanwhile, Eastern Airlines announces that one out of seven flight attendants will bq dismissed, and those who are not will need to put in longer days. The news was (quite unby conscienderstandably) met with rue men and women who tious and find it difficult to understand why suddenly their material welfare should be reduced., : The answer to that question is very sirrn pie: People Express Airlines will fly you from the New York area to Columbia, S.C., for about 50 bucks. Eastern has been charging, for the same flight, more than $200. Are we supposed to get mad at People Express for providing cheaper fares? One should pause before taking offense at the workings of automation and efficient management. I have heard it calculated that if the methods of telephone transmission of the 1930s were in use today, in order to acj commodate contemporary telephone traffic the telephone companies would need to hire every working woman between the ages of 21 and 60. But it isnt only irrational and brutalitar-ia- n practices that offend. There are the delicacies. Those who were there insist that a performance of Verdis Requiem at Carnegie Hall a couple of Sundays back was memorable. We will never know, because the labor unions dont permit even archival recordings, never mind that the cost is trivhard-workin- g . ial. And last week I learned about a routine incident in San Jose, Calif. The symphony orchestra was rehearsing with Peter Serkin the first piano concerto of Brahms. At exactthe clily 10 oclock, exactly 10 measures were left to be mactic few bars of music the shop stewardess played. But a lady playing the French horn or whatever stood, and the whole orchestra stopped dead, as if Stalin or Hitler had entered the room, commanding silence. You see, if the music had gone 30 seconds over the hour, the union would have charged a billion dollars or whatever, and of course the orchestra association doesnt have the extra billion. And so the musicians themselves suffered the psychological ruptqre; coitus interruptus musicalis. Peter Serkins frustration was allayed by improvised notes easplaying a ing the harmony into resolution. I hope they wont drop him into the East River in a sack of cement for this offense. As I say, some dare call this kind of thing fascistic. half-doze- n HOKE fORTHf cmiNMiY bility. Maybe human nature seeks stability," Robert S. Pindyck wrote in The New York Times. But more of the same high unemployment and negative economic growth? That stability we can't afford "And this is what the staff jokingly refers to as the Khadafy wii. J |
