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Show The Salt Lake Tribune, The Public Forum Tribune Readers Opinions with few choices Too Much for Rent skiers ski like Gov Bangerter to exstate which ranks last children in spending for school-ag- e he can justify spending $70,000 on paying rent for the Jazz at the Salt Palace? Let those overpaid basketball players give some of their outrageous salaries to pay the rent, and use our tax dollars to educate our children. Why should we, the public, help out elitist sports teams? If the Jazz leave Utah, so what? KATHRYN LUQUE Kearns I would plain how in a Forum Rules Public Forum letters must be submitted exclusively 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 writer's 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. Only Choice Dick Bass says that steepness and snow conditions make Little Cottonwood Canyon an unsafe environment for the growing numbers of cross- country skiers, and the canyon and public would be best served by lift and downhill-skiin- g development. I don't intend to argue with a guy who says God told him to develop a ski resort, hut it is Dick Bass and his real eastate buddies that have engulfed all the beginning and intermediate cross-countterrain in the Cottonwood Canyons, leaving nordic ry Dirk By Edwin Guthman Newspapers Months before November 1984, when Nicaragua held its first national election since the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, President Reagan wrote it off as meaningless. Any election held in Nicaragua would be merely a rubber stamp to keep the Sandinistas in power, he said. Nicaraguans voted two days before for a second Reagan was term and in the flush of winning an er Edwin Guthman is editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. enormous mandate, he had one word for the Nicaraguan election phony. We do not consider that the process the Sandinistas went through on Nov. 4 was a free and fair election, said John Hughes, then the State Departments spokesman. It wasnt, but it was no more rigged than the Philippine election that President Ferdinand Marcos thought would be a rubber stamp to keep him in power. But Reagan wasnt too perturLed about the violence, the allegations of d widespread fraud or the Philippine vote count. As he gingerly answered questions at his news conference last week, one could wonder whether he had read State Depart long-delaye- of where to From Garbage United Press International WASHINGTON was reading I d Big Deal I read with interest Badges and Bullhorns" (Tribune editorial, Feb. 4). You must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel for subjects to comment on. If the worst the speeding motorist received was a slow down fella over a public address system, he should consider himself lucky. I feel that if the facts were all known, the 56 mph on the digital speedometer would turn out to be faster than was indicated. According to numerous enthusiast car periodicals (sic), new car speedometers can be off from 5 to 15 percent, or more. I see nothing wrong with the Utah Highway Patrol trooper saying slow down fella over the p.a., and I think most citizens would rather have that happen then receive a citation for speeding. If the trooper saying fella insults you, perhaps you should venture out into the real world once in a while. I think you would find that fella is not an insult at all. I guess this whole incident can be summed up by saybig deal. ing JIM JASTRAM Syracuse ment cables from Manila or watched scenes of the election on television or listened when Sen. Richard G. Lugar, and Rep. John P. Murtha, the leaders of the official U.S. team of observers, briefed him on their findings. An election guide, according to Reagan, is that there are different strokes for different votes. Well, he said, I think that were concerned about the violence that was evident there and the possibility of fraud. And then he completed the sentence with what may be the most fateful and most unfortunate comment of his presidency: although it could have been all of that was occurring on both D-P- ... ... sides. There have been few, if any, reports of challenger Corazon Aquinos supporters trying to intimidate Marcos followers, steal ballots or phony the vote count, so that remark, plus others that were just as ambivalent, sent a signal to the Philippines. It was that if Marcos steals the election, the White House may hem and haw, but the words meaningless or it was not a free or fair election will not be uttered and the United States will get on with the business of doing business with a fading tyrant. So Reagans remarks were music to Marcos ears but like bitter herbs to Aquino. They undercut her coura OK Kick OPEC While Universal Press Syndicate The presidents opposition to taxing foreign oil imports is unhappily more and more plausible. He should reverse himself on the point before the plausibility takes hold. Between 1973 and 1981, the OPEC powers were an operating oligopoly with the power to push up the price of oil to heights undreamed of. Spot market oil was selling for over $40 during the high extortionate point of OPECs heyday. There were available to us at the time a number of responses, some of them offensive, some of them defensive. President Carter managed to select the worst conceivable basket of policies. First, geous bid to oust Marcos. They rossed moderates who would be the backbone of any restoration of democracy in the Philippines. Instead of standing up to Marcos unmistakable and very clumsy theft of the election and standing for the democratic process, Reagan waffled. In so doing, he put the United States embarrassingly in Marcos corner and likely to stay there unless Congress can pressure him to change sides. There were signs of stiffening congressional opposition to Reagan in the reaction of Lugar and other influential senators, including the Republican majority leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, and Sam Nunn of Georgia, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. But time is running out, and the tragedy is that Reagans words cant be recalled. Theyve been spoken and theyve been heard not just in the Philippines, but in South Korea where Kim Dae Jung, whose career embodies his peoWar II struggle for ples freedom and justice, endures house arrest; in South Africa where Nobel double-c- post-Worl- d laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu strives to hold the moderate ground as violence mounts; in nations around the world wherever people yearn to be free and look to the United States to champion their fight. And inevitably, the contrast between Reagans views of what consti- tutes a free and fair election If Governments Selling, Washington Post Service The word is an atrocity, but the most appealing notion in President Reagans 1986 program is privatization. Selling off some of the governments facilities or functions to private enterprise or individuals is a y idea. I am attracted to it in part because one of the things Reagan has in mind selling soon is the Bonneville Power Administration on the Columbia River, and I have been a Bonneville freak since I was 16. That summer, two buddies jim-dand- Wt-- Could Rise The ski area developers should realize there are four seasons to the year. Hiking near ski resorts where the mountain has been carved and may not be as challenging as "Seven Summits, but it could be our only choice if we dont control canyon development. I wonder how Mr. Bass plans to compensate the hikers, hunters, back country skiers and nature lovers when he expands his resort. Perhaps there is a similar canyon adjacent to the remaining national forest land that he could buy for us. 1 hope it has a cirque as beautiful as White Pine. BARBARA TURNER Backcountry Director Utah Nordic Ski Association WASHINGTON All Mountain Peaks Its Down he attempted to freeze the price of old oil, then he imposed huge windfall profit taxes on the discovery of fresh oil, then he diddled with various sorts of deregulation, then he called for a Synthetic Fuels Corporation, which managed to spend $10 billion or so in search of a synthetic oil, which enterprise is now all but officially abandoned. Great Britain belonged to that kind of thing. But it would not have been difficult to exclude from the projected tariff our two neighboring oil exporters, Mexico and Canada. non-OPE- C Nothing was done. It is widely interpreted that Saudi Arabia is consciously pushing down the price of oil by its startling overproduction. Its motives are obvious: to teach a lesson to recalcitrant members of OPEC (e.g., Nigeria and Venezuela), and to intimidate nonmembers of OPEC (notably Great Britain) to toe the line. The plan is to drive oil to the point where it becomes only marginally profitable (it costs over $9 per barrel to take oil out of the North Sea in some areas; and there are pools of oil off Alaska and Norway that simply cant be exploited at current oil prices). This is easy for Saudi Arabia to do, given that its oil grows almost like cactus on its sand, requiring a mere $3 per barrel to pull it out of the ground. Abroad, he did nothing, when the alternative was pretty clear. If a bunch of nations make an alliance the purpose of which is to wage aggressive economic war against other countries, why, other countries retaliate. The most obvious form of retaliation would have been to clamp down a whopping tax on oil that came in from any OPEC power. This is not easy to do, because oil is, as the economists put it, a fungible product, and when it flows into a U.S. refinery from a tanker, there is no way you can absolutely ascertain its pedigree. Thus Saudi Arabian oil might have sneaked in via a Panamanian tanker that had papers showing that the oil Reagan Let Worlds Freedom Lovers Down Knight-Ridd- February 19,1986 Wednesday, Nica will be ragua vs. the Philippines noticed. The analogy, of course, can be stretched too far. There are differences. There was little, if any, violence or intimidation in Nicaraguas election, but there also was only token opposition to the Sandinista ticket. A breakdown in negotiations over the date of the election and whether the Sandinistas would respect the results caused the strongest the Coordina-dor- a opposition coalition led by Arturo Jose Cruz, a former member of the Sandinista junta to boycott the election. Without Cruz in the race, the Sandinistas won a hollow victory. Nicaragua historically has had little experience with democracy and the Sandinistas unmistakably are avowed communists, bent on consolistate in dating a Marxist-LeniniNicaragua with close ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba. Though the Philippines have been under the yoke of martial law almost continually since 1972, it has a tradition of democratic principles; close, friendly ties with the United States; and, as the election demonstrated, enormous opposition to Marcos. Those differences, however, created a far greater chance for peaceful change in the Philippines than there ever was in Nicaragua. But the fact is that Reagan, who could see a rigged election in Nicaragua before it happened, couldnt see one in the Philippines when it stared him right in the face. last-minu- te st ar Now Mr. Reagan has an intuitive objection to fresh taxes (a tax is a tax is a tax) that is extremely healthy; added to this the disinclination to get into the business of tariffs, which is like passing around junk, and before you know it, everybody has an excuse for another tariff. But foreign oil under OPEC management clearly invites corporate retaliation. The only excuse not to use a tariff at this point is that OPEC is breaking down. But what is happening is palpably a case of reculer pour mieux sauter (to draw back in order to make a better jump) one step backward, two steps forward. It is imprudent to bask in the victory the free market has won over the cartel if, just around the corner, we see the resurrection of that cartel, perhaps with unprecedented powers, the more so as the consuming public gets back to the old habit of spending oil like water. Surely there is a third reason to increase the tax on oil. We are in fact depleting a national asset, and doing so faster than we replenish it. We accept as axiomatic the obligation to reforest areas of wood we chop down. A $10 rise in the price of crude would incidentally stabilize an oil industry on which, thanks to our bankers, we are heavily dependent. It would provide revenue, moreover, to revitalize the nuclear power industry. Harmonious legislation should be enacted. Increase the price of a barrel of oil to the level at which it sold a year ago and we would a) continue to emasculate OPEC; b) continue to encourage husbandry among consumers; and c) generate income with which to cultivate sources of energy on which our children will need to rely. the other day about how some waterfront communities have made fishing more productive by dumping hundreds of old bathtubs, washbowls, school buses and the like in the ocean "A properly constructed artificial reef increases an areas fish population over time, says the National Geographic Society. Which is exactly the point I've been trying to make as more and more communities run out of dumping ground. Not all municipalities are near the sea, alas, but if fish thrive in habitdts formed by "putting all kinds of discarded objects on ocean floors would not other wildlife flourish in high and dry dumps? What about the California condor, for instance? At last count, there were only five condors left. Imagine that nearly extinct bird nesting and soaring majestically around artificial mountain peaks created from old bathtubs, washbowls, school buses and the like. Ill wager the condor population would increase, as would the census of other endangered species allowed to do what comes naturally in the wilds of discarded civilized artifacts. Many wild creatures already have reached the point where they cant wait for Earth's continental plates to form new mountain ranges by banging together. They would be extinct by then. They need our help now and we may be throwing away the very stqff they need. For some officials, just findings new place to dump trash is reward enough. Others experiment with 'using garbage landfills to provide fuel, new suburbs or something. One tendency has been to fill with used auto tires. That works fine unless someone sets it afire op a developer gets wind that a onetime cavity has become level. Piling trash into heaps, or heaping trash into piles, until new mountaip ranges are formed might not be as lucrative as subdividing a level landfill. The Geographic says that state funds for reef construction have been undependable in the past. If the states have been reluctant to spend money to dunk old washbowls, you can surmise how they might tefel about building trash mountains. And with Gramm-Rudma- n cutting off or reducing many federal grants, state funds are likely to become even more undependable in the future. There are, however, ways out. One is selling hunting licenses once an endangered species, such as condors or grizzly bears, has been established in the area. Another is to build more golf courses in the desert. Sand dredges, we are told, have been sunk to improve seafood hangouts. But what of sand wedges? Golf clubs broken by players wl(o took too many strokes in a sand trap would make ideal foundations for ar7 tificial mountains. To a layer of fractured wedges could be added enough old bathtubs, washbowls, school buses and the like to turn a sand trap into a highland.-I- t might be necessary to change the name of the golf course, but saving the condor and all the unusual hazards would make it worthwhile. Ill Buy might have been thought likely to understand the attractiveness of privatization, had an article by Lee Smith saying, The Administrations plan to sell off the government is a political, not an economic, measure. But as I thought about it, his proposition became less offensive and more accurate. Indeed, nothing so clarifies the question as to whether something should be done by the government as to ask: Is it something youd want if the government were offering it for sale? There are many things beyond Bonneville Id like to buy from the government, but aid to the Contras would not be among them. Far more appealing to me are a couple of lighthouses in northern Michigan or that underwater national park off St. Johns in the Virgin Islands. If the notion catches on, it could produce some healthy competition among Cabinet members. Suppose that President Reagan establishes an incentive program in which the more a department sells, the more money it will have to buy some new things. Cap Weinberger would have funds for the Strategic Defense Initiative lasers only if he could peddle several hundred of his Bradley Fighting Vehicles as being for freeway and RV use in California. Similarly on the domestic side, there is much to recommend the privatization strategy. If you were running the Department of Agriculture, would you give out food stamps to good customers? I suspect that in order to keep the farmers going in these tough times, I would, and not grudgingly either. I know it would be great to have the clinics for expectant mothers and for premature infants operating under my name, to say nothing of having an aircraft carrier or two at ones call. No mugger is going to give you any trouble when he understands you have your own aircraft carrier, just over the horizon. If the Department of Transportation underwent privatization, there might still be subsidies for mass transit but not for any city with so little pride that it tolerated graffiti on its subway cars or Mayor Koch at the controls. The Department of Treasury would give out toaster-oven- s to those patriotic enough to buy bonds, and if you made a really big purchase to help refinance the debt, you might get a compact disc player. The Department of Justice could sell its own brand of affirmative-actio- n certificates, in gold or silver, reading: Im so sincere in my belief in equality, I don't have to prove it. There really is no limit to the privatization strategy. non-leth- al David Broder and I celebrated the end of the war and our escape from home by bumming around the West. Bonneville Dam was a marvel to behold. the biggest thing Id ever seen In the summer of 1969, when my own family was on the mandatory Western trip, I dragged my four sons off to see the dam for themselves. They complained bitterly on the drive over that they hadn't had time enough to gallivant around on Mt. Hood. But when we descended into the great dam and felt the pounding of its power-plan- t turbines, they were as awed as I had been almost a quarter-centur- y before. The sale, to be honest, does not come up at a convenient time. I have some unexpected expenses around the house and the car has not been running smoothly. But if there is a chance to buy Bonneville, Im going to buy it. In meglo-mania- c moments, I think what fun it would be just to stand there with my hand on the switch and say, Goodnight, now, Portland, and turn out the lights. But what I really covet is the fish ladder. It would be great to go down to the dam at the end of a trying day, and just watch the salmon go by. My salmon climbing my fish ladder. Feel like some salmon for dinner? Well, sure. How about that one? Help yourself. Sen. Mark Hatfield was quoted as saying that Bonneville would be sold "over my dead body. But you know that in politics, money talks, and I figure Hatfield just wants to be sure President Reagan gets a good price. It did bother me some that Fortune magazine, which .) At Commercial Credit, we tell you right how low your monthly payments will front up be. And along with your low payments, we give you plenty of time to repay, and we dont ask for one bit of collateral. Well Credit. Up front, fair, plain talking. So call j Commercial Credit. 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