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Show April 21, 1977 The Utah Independent Page 5 DUNN WILL NOT RUN The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand Minimum Wage Hurts The Poor by John F. McManus SecBelmont, Massachusetts of Labor Marshall retary Ray has formally proposed that Congress boost the minimum wage to $2.50 per hour. Organized labor wants a larger boost, to $3.00 per hour, from the current $2.30. So the debate in Congress will be over how much the increase shall be. What Congress to help the poor, ought to do to stimulate business, and to cut welfare is abolish minimum wage laws. Assumed Power Federal minimum wage laws came into being in 1938 when Congress first decided that it had the power to set a bottom limit on wages. In the years since, the minimum wage has risen steadily to the current $2.30, and the number of workers covered has swelled so that the law now applies to virtually every employee. Yet there is no constitutional basis for the federal government to tell an employer what he must pay a worker. Congress simply assumed the power, claiming that it could do so because of the Interstate Commerce Clause (Congress shall have power to regulate commerce . . . among the ... several states). That clause in the Constitution certainly gave no such er. Its purpose was to bar tariffs and trade supposed to know for certain that minimum wage laws help the poor and the unskilled. But just the opposite is true. Because they interfere with the normal operations of the market place, minimum wage laws have thrown countless numbers of workers out of work and onto welfare rolls. When an employer is required to pay a higher wage than he can afford, he simply lets employees go. The work that was once done by Americans is now being done in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. A great deal of American industry has closed its doors because of minimum wage laws, and a great deal more has never gotten off the drawing board. Minimum wage laws are especially harmful to young, unskilled workers. Previously, an employer did not have to pay high wages to green teenagers while he was training and making productive citizens out of them. Today, he cannot afford to train them, and the result is g an army of unem- re- strictions. But the Roosevelt Supreme Court reinterpreted the clause in such a manner that window washers in an office building are covered by minimum wage laws because some of the buildings tenants do business in several states. The same tortured abuse of the real meaning and intent of the Constitution is also applied to farm workers, restaurant employees, and all kinds of workers, even though they and their employers in no way enter into interstate commerce. After almost forty years of this type of twisting of the Constitution to satisfy Washingtons ravenous appetite for power, no one is supposed to even Federal response to unemployment, especially for the young, is government make-wor- k g projects financed by deficits and taxes. The cycle leads to more of the same, including increased meddling by government in areas it has no business to enter. How many more workers will be thrown onto welfare rolls, and how many more businesses inflation-producin- ever-high- will close, before Congress has the guts to admit that its minimum wage laws are a failure? The debate in Congress should not be whether or not to increase them, but whether they should exist at all. The thing to do with minimum wage laws is to abolish them. 1977 The John Birch Society Features The budget deficit for around $70 billion. It was done deliberately, and criminally. this fiscal year will be FOR SALQ NEW CHANNELS ANGLES, FLATS, and SQUARE TUBING Aka USED PIM mmt fUTI WASATCH METAL & SALVAGE 203 Waal 3M South SALttAKK CITY, UTAH PH0NE484-3.i- l BUYERS OF SCRAP IRON AND METAL Silver and Cold COINS Any Quantity We will trade ONE U.S. SILVER DOLLAR FOR 1 oz. SILVER MONARCH COIN CORPORATION Phone 21 East 3900 South 1 iaaaai er Salt Lake City, Utah 262-58- 74 OTHER THE The Harmful Effects But lets look beyond this vast assumption of power. We are ployed young people. te Salt Lake City (TUI): Salt Lake Commission County Chairman William E. Dunn made a startling statement during the enemy of the poor! ever-growin- powstate-to-sta- SCOTT question the federal governments right to set wages. To do so is asking to be labelled an FOR COMMISSION AGAIN WATERGATES Bv Paul Scott Washington: uIt Didnt Start With Watergate is definitely the book that cried out to be written. Anyone covering the nations capital for any length of time knows that the time is ripe for the publication in book form the public and hidden scandals of inadministrations, cluding those glossed over or ignored by the mainstream of the Washington press corps. This is exactly what Victor Lasky, a newsman of forty years experience, has done in his easy reading political bombshell that pulls no punches at the great or the mighty who dominated political scene here during the past 45 years. The book's explosive pages cover the political waterfront here from the early 1930s through and including the Watergate era and how the press operated during that period. In rapid fire succession, the author of JFK:The Man And The Myth, vividly details a scandal every dozen pages and how in numerous instances the Executive and Congressional branches of government along with part of the press aided and abetted in covering up, playing down, or looking the pre-Waterg- ate other way. While most of the scandals spotlighted by Lasky have been surfaced in one form or another before, the merit of his carefully researched book is in the sharp contrast it shows in the investigation and handling of these scandals with that of Watergate by Congress and the media. As the Conservative Book Club bulletin announcing the coming publication of IT Didnt Start With Watergate stresses: Lasky never loses sight of the two over-riditruths: These Democrat scandals would never have been ignored or suppressed, but for the buddy-budd- y relationship of the Dems and their cronies in the media. Watergate would never have occasioned two years of media-fuele- d hysteria if the media had put Watergate in the context of 30 years of Democrat scandals, many of them far more serious than ng Watergate.. THE CHANCING ROLES As documented in his book, those that bugged hotel rooms and broke into congressional offices in the 1950s and 1960s without being prosecuted w;ere the loudest critics of the Watergate bugging activities of the Nixon adand break-in- s ministrations. The unbroken litany of Democrat and media hypocrisy poured out in the book by Lasky goes like this: Democrat legacy we never and hear about; the anti-semit- ic slurs of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, racial Johnson, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe, Jack and Bobby, a revealing glimpse into her diary and the Kennedy connection. Missing police records on her death. Did leading Democrats and some newsmen know in advance that Watergate would happen? New York newspaper prints the stolen medical records of a district attorney up for reelection, and righteously condemns the Ellsberg break-ia key issue in the Watergate scandal. President Roosevelts son John on his father's bugging habits. n, The circumstances Forgotten: Teddy Kennedys surrounding former Newsweek crash; plane editor candidly admits why we never heard about President Kennedys foul language. What President Johnson did to Gold water in 1964 behind his back. How President Kennedy halted an indictment of his brother, Bobby; how a correspondent knew marijuana was introduced to President Kennedy in the White House by one of his girl friends. Spy squad at the Democrat conventions directed by President Johnson; President admits confidante Kennedys Kennedy wiretapping; how the Democratic National Committee secretly went after rightwing groups; the shocking abuse of Otto Otepkas civil rights that went un-punis- and generally un reported. J. Edgar Hoover on wiretapping in Bobby Kennedys Justice Department. The day columnist Jack Anderson Commission regular County on meeting Wednesday, April 13. During a discussion with Mrs. Betty Bates on matters pertaining to an attempted resolution to consolidation. adopt county-cit- y Commissioner Dunn said he will not run for the Salt Lake County Commission again. What was to have been a surprise request by Salt Lake County Attorney Paul Van Dam for a resolution to porpose a November 8, 1977 vote on consolidation of Salt Lake City and County, turned out to be fairly well known among people with genuine interest in county government. Two persons who appeared before the commission spoke in favor of the resolution and at least five against, with one man, the representative of the deputy sheriffs union being somewhat ambiguous. CITY COMMISSIONER PHILLIPS FIRST The first person to address the County Commission was Salt Lake Commissioner Jennings Gty Commissioner Jr. Phillips, Phillips stated that he represented himself and three other City Commissioners and the mayors of all other towns and cities in the county, in opposition to the proposed resolution. County Commission Chairman Dunn pointed out that no resolution had been presented yet, but as he was saying this. Attorney Van Dam stepped to the lectern and announced that he wante'd to offer the resolution. The only other person in favor of the resolution was Charles Howard Starr, who is running for city commission. FOUR OTHERS OPPOSED got caught redhanded. The Johnson administrations domestic spying program under than Attorney Victor General Ramsey Clark. Reuthers chilling memo to Robert Kennedy on how to crush conservative leaders and groups. THE PICBALANCING None of these old and TURE new disclosures make enjoyable reading but the publication of these sordid details should help put Watergate and its costly fallout into the right perspective. Such a balanced look is urgently needed today if we as a nation arc to find our way through the dark days and troubled times ahead. Already the new Justice under Attorney Department Bell has begun to Griffin General prosecute FBI officials for using extraordinary measures to protect the security of the country. In sharp contrast, the same Justice Department has refused to act against former CIA agents who openly consort with our enemies and finger our intelligence agents abroad. This is why It Didnt Start With Watergate" should be read bv everyone. four other The people speaking in opposition to the resolution, in order, were Tom Breitling, Bonnie Bruce, Betty Bates, and Ken Hammond. Hammond is Undersheriff or Assistant Sheriff to Sheriff Delmar Swede Larson. statements Following by citizens the Commissioners expressed their own opinions. Commissioners Kutulas and Hutchinson spoke against and voted against the resolution aiid Commissioner Dunn spoke for and voted for it. It was defeated by 2 to 1. LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS TO INITIATE PETITION Members of the Salt Lake County and Utah League of Women Voters who were present were reported to have said they will initiate a petition in Salt Lake County to get the Rampton-Galliva- n Charter of Consolidation on the November 8 ballot. 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