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Show T V "ir- - w'rmnlrrTwvnv''wm t t i P?g3M 'AgJl mni 3jh tmnjt; '.'" I t mrn p- -i i . r w w nrmui frm1 t . t u - S w ? WW'RX-V-- 9 11 '0'f, -v y if Tr Mirrrnr 1" pir msm pinion i Trial of the century was waste of time, THIS 15 mprm money, emotions The trial of the century is over. Too bad it was not an important issue that was decided. The OJ, Simpson trial was simply a murder trial. This was not a trail which set precedence which will affect history, unless of ing. What would those lions of dollars A bil- accom- plished if put to humanitarian purposes? Since we have learned that the race issue is alive and festering, some of that money could have been used to bring blacks and whites together by providing meaningful community opportun- course the lesson is that jus tice can be bought But even so, there are not that many people who could afford a ities for lifestyle changes. New colleges could have $10 million defense, of been built; new housing time and energy erected in place of ghettos. does not lift soeiety to a Billions would go a long , this waste No, Americans higher plain, a new under- way toward the goal of endstanding of critical issues. ing racism in America. When the social ills Although the issue of domestic abuse was dis- plaguing this country are discussed, the not guilty verdict certainly was a strike against abused women. Some would argue that the issue is now being talked about more. So what? If perpetrators are not going to be punished why waste a womans time talking about her rights, or her safety. cussed, leading the list is the lack of help for the growing elderly population. The advertising billions donated to the cause of freeing a murderer could have made an incredible difference in the lives of many senior citizens who cannot afford proper living conditions or adequate food. What about the health care issue? How When you think what could have been accomsick children could plished with the amount of many seen doctors on O.J.? have resources spent on this farce it is staggering. With $10 Could we have found a cure million spent by the defense for cancer, or for AIDS? We for attorneys fees, another will never know. The only thing we can be $10 million spent by the sure of is that the obsession prosecution, and the money with OJ. is nearing a close. lost by the jurors in their nine months of sequestra- His children will be dogged tion, millions of children the rest of their lives just as could have been innoculated are the Kennedy children, with one enormous differagainst infectious diseases. With a low estimate of 12 ence, the Kennedys father a heros death. hours a day of television died ' that is the lesson coverage in the 16 months , weMaybe learn must from these since the famous Bronco months on monotonos chase, 5,760 hours have long dozens passed. If those watching the testimony, including hours regarding where the of event had spent just one tenth of that time pursuing white Bronco was parked, an education, all would have and dozens of hours from attained a doctorate degree. Maria Lopez about where she walked the dog. In fact, Pollsters show that 91 permuch of the testimony cencent of televisions were tered on dogs being walked tuned to the O J verdict reador barking and the kind of ing, now thats a lot of docbarking the dog was doing. tors, Was it a bark or a plaintive What could have been wail? purchased with the money Now that the long, tedious spent Od television time and hours of the trial of the cencommercials? The list is are over, lets not lose endless, KSL Television tury sight of what it was about. charges $900 to $5,000 per Two innocent people died at 30 second, prime time commercial, If we equate the the hands of a former footnumber of commercials ball hero. Yes he was found which aired during evening not guilty, but he was not newscasts and news maga- found innocent. Now we zine shows centered on the must change our moniker for O.l. trial, and multiply that MrJSimpson. He was once a number by the cost of adver- hero, now hes a murderer. tising the number is stagger Lets not forget Businesses search for courteous customers My suggestion for a Better Customer Bureau continues to hit a nerve among the business community. From recent comments, merchants appear to agree with me that an organization needs to be formed to weed out obnoxious customers and associated freeloaders. For example, a manager at a Blockbuster Music notes that some of his stores customers abuse the free listening privilege. Some of our customers roll in to the store and spend hours upon hours having us unwrap CDs for them to listen to but if they like what they hear, they drive to another music retailer and buy the CD there in order to save two bucks. To me, thats an example of abuse. 0 COUNTY Published semi weekly by Clipper Publishing Co., Inc. P O Bo 267 1370 500 West South Bountiful, Utah 84011-026- John Pitt Contributing Writer There are three documents keeping democracy alive in America the today, Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Boy Scout Handbook. The Declaration of Independence decries tyranny, the Constitution protects individual rights, and the Boy Scout Handbook advocates attendance of at least one city council meeting. Sitting through an evening of budget reviews and zoning regulation may not seem like an act of democratic presentation, but as any serious Scout will tell you, it can be a grueling test of patriotic endurance. There is little or nothing on a city council meeting agenda of interest to 12 Still, they attend these meetings in droves. They go because it is a Community merit badge booklet offers the following instructions to When you attend paper, sit in the public seating area, and observe the proceedings. You will find them fascinating. Most of the boys I have seen at council meetings did not look fascinated. They looked painfully bored. Looks can be deceiving, however, so I decided to ask some of these Scouts if attending a public meeting had awakened their sense of civic duty. I gazed over the audience at a recent Bountiful city council meeting, and saw a cluster of young men who appeared to be Boy Scouts. I looked closer for confirmation. Yes. ..there between one boys Chicago Bulls sweatshirt and his cut-oshorts was the olive green shirt tail of an official Boy Scout uniform. Mayor John Cushing must have seen the same patch of green because he began giving the Scouts a special welff $25 00 per year. Mailed $35 00 per year on ) Publication No (USPS published Years New at of and Christmas week Bountiful, the and except Friday Tuesday Utah. Second class postage paid at Bountiful, Utah Address all correspondence to P. O. Box 267, Bountiful, Utah 8401 ISSN: 1061-122- 149-180- semi-weekl- asked them what business they had before the council. As expected, they had no hidden political agendas. You gotta come to get the merit badge, said Dallas George, age 12. government meeting a requirement for advancement. The silence that followed was particularly awkward for Scout Leader Ken Romney, who was there with the boys. He offered a few helpful sugges- the meeting, take a pencil and 504 per copy. be paying attention. When the meeting adjourned, I followed them out to the foyer to get their reaction to the civics lesson they just received. There were five boys, all from Great Salt Lake Area Troop 240. I The Community merit badge, requirement for the Citizenship In aspiring Scouts, rati: ed to sleep on it. He even threw in some phony snoring for effect. I had just resolved to question the young snorer about his duties as a community citizen when I noticed a group of boys on the other side of the room. They were different from most of the Scouts I had seen at these meetings. For one thing, they were in uniform. They were sitting quietly and appeared to Then I asked the group why they thought the Boy Scouts of America made attending a local which a Scout must earn to become an Eagle. The Citizenship In The Subscription Smiths Grocery employee who overhead a mother telling her children to take fruit from the produce section. The store wont care, she told the kids, and you guys need your vitamins. Yes, thats abuse to say nothing about petty shoplifting! Such shabby customer behavior occurs daily in businesses throughout Utah. This week's Exhibit A comes from Utah County, the place where LaVell needs a buddy and some folks need a course in ethics. Visiting a Provo restaurant to celebrate their wedding anniversary, a couple ordered two beverages and two dinners: seafood and o prime rib. ' There was nothing wrong with the food. (They enjoyed it and consumed it.) There was nothing wrong with the price. (They didnt balk at the $47 bill.) But they did felt uncomfortable with the waiter. The Provo couple was not greeted by a Singing Waiter; rather, they were unfortunately met by an Insurance-Sellin- g Waiter, a malcontent, who amit the cheese balls and the dinner rolls, asked the husband about his current insurance policy (which company, what premium, the amount of coverage, etc.). The couple was rightly annoyed. The waiter acted very unprofes-sionallwrote the woman. y, But the couple didn't ask the manager to assign a new server to the table. They didnt complain at all. In fact, at the end of the meal, the Provo couple added a 14 percent tip to the bill. Then, two days later, the woman had second thoughts. She called the restaurant owner explaining the incident. The owner agreed that selling insurance at a restaurant was inappropriate and wrote the woman to inform her that the waiter had been dismissed. But that wasnt what the woman wanted. Instead, she wanted a full refund not only for the meal but also the 14 percent tip she freely Waiter! gave the Insurance-Sellin- g She demanded a refund of $53.50... And if the restaurant owner did not comply with her demand, she would make copies of all corand rush it to the respondence nearest attorney. The owner was not amused. The only way he could provide a full refund for the check, he said, would be to have the goods returned and since the husband and wife could not regurgitate the products they consumed, they could go straight to (well. ..you know, the place never uttered in polite Provo society.) And then the owner called Cyclops. Youre exactly right, he exclaimed. Nora day goes by that we dont hear from some idiot who wantsomething for nothing. Ill be the first member of the Better Customer Bureau. So we have our first official member. Now the only thing we need is a business insurance policy. Hey, I know this former waiter in Provo who... Brave scouts attend city council meetings year-old-boy- s. DAVIS Yes it is. And a similar example of business abuse was reported by a g made come. One a pillow with his hand and pretend Eagle-In-Waitin- tions which his Scouts quickly So well be better adopted. informed, said Ryan Trinnaman, age 14 So well know how the city runs things, said Eric Stokes, age 12. Because wed probably never go otherwise, surmised Dallas George. Next I asked the boys their opinion of Mayor Cushing Hes kind of a beanie guy, offered Tim Pitts with all the candor that one would expect from a boy. At that point Scout Leader Romney quickly reminded the boys that they needed to go look at the Freedom Shrine elsewhere in the building. And so, off they went on the next leg of their journey toward better citizenship. I felt disappointed that the interview hadnt been more informa- tive. Then I remembered a Bountiful city council meeting held more than 20 years ago. I was there with several other Scouts Tom Troop 503 to earn the Citizenship In The Community merit badge. Mayor Elmer Barlow welcomed us warmly, but we just laughed to ourselves because he had the same First name as Mr. Fudd of cartoon fame. Nevertheless, we went on to earn that merit badge. Then we went on to high school, college, marriage, and productive careers. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a felon, a spy, or an anarchist among us. Instead, we are involved in civic organizations, church groups...even scouting. In short we became the type of community citizens that the scouting program encouraged us to be. Some of us now have sons of our own who will soon be of scouting age. They too will be encouraged to attend a city council meeting, and they too will probably under estimate its value to a democratic society. They may never set foot in a city council chamber again, but at least they will have witnessed citizen government in action. Who knows where that single image could lead them? John Cushing, that beanie guy who so ably fills the big shoes of Bountifuls mayor, told me recently, Thank goodness for the Boy Scouts. Sometimes they are the only citizens who show up. Perhaps its time the Citizenship in the Community merit badge was offered for adults. In Your Opinion f 'Poor service from post office , county 9 Editor, I am writing to complain about the lack of service to the taxpayers by two government agencies, namely the US Post Office in Kaysville, Utah and the Davis County Board of Equalization (auditor). Both agencies joined together to provide poor service. July 30, 1995 the county mailed out valuation notices that represented a 60 percent increase in taxes. I was out of town at the time and that an requested in appeal form be mailed to my home. It took the county over a week to get it there arriving on the 29th. I promptly Filled out the form and deposited it in the mail drop outside the Kaysville Post Office August 30, In order to avoid the possibility of it sitting in a mail carriers jeep and being postmarked after August 31. Some how that letter sat in the Kaysville Post Office an extra day and got a September 1 postmark. A mid-Augu- st that the only way to guarantee that you get that days postmark is to ask at the counter to have it hand canceled. The Board of Equalization refused to accept my appeal with a September 1 postmark, saying Your application was mailed after the deadline of August 31, 1995. Now hold on here! A letter deposited (mailed) at the post office after a certain time in the evening of August 31, could have a 1 postmark. And if mailed in Kaysville could have a September December 31 postmark. The county only had to deposit the US mail the valuation notices 30 days before the deadline to meet their legal requirement. Most other legal notices have only to be deposited in the mail (not postmarked) by the deadline. And what kind of inept appraisers is the county employing that show a 60 percent increase in value when most banks show about half of that increase. Come next election I postal employee I complained to stated that Sometimes when we encourage voters to throw the bums out and take a chance on someone else who might realize we elect them to serve the public, not be inflexible bureaucrats! have high volume. I have seen mail left for die next day. He also stated Edward Parker Fruit Heights POOR COPY |