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Show the Utah dQ ENTERPRISE PRAGMATIC DOGMATICS Cosmetic government and By Kent Shearer Cosmetic government, like cosmetic medicine, has both its uses and abuses. For instance, doctors sometimes find it convenient to prescribe remedies that, while they bear no rational correlation to the disease treated, are designed to make the patient feel better. This legerdemain has its utility so long as the patient responds affirmatively. No bitter medicine is injested. Believing is believing. The physician is respected, perhaps loved. If, however, the patient inquires, he will discover that his sugar coated pill is no cure at The patient then all. It is illusory only. becomes aroused, and seeks a different doctor. As with medicos, so with politicians. If the public is convinced that something is being done for them, even if it isn't the government official is in hog heaven. Woe in twe sam mBM AEfour broux-imeea- i riskt the Humphrey-Hawkin- s (1) to accept the title (2) to endorse the 4 objective; but (3) not to unto the politico, however, who is found to have applied mere cosmetics in lieu of arent. He proposes: meaningful solutions. Which brings us to Jimmy Carter's recent Humphrey-Hawkin- s the maneuver full employment bill. Introduced in Congress prior to Carters inauguration, it would have set a goal of no more than 4 percent nationwide unemployment by 1983, and would have funded specific government job programs to achieve that goal if not otherwise obtainable. The original legislation was, indeed, a bitter pill. Public jobs mean more public moneys, and more public moneys mean either additional taxes, additional deficits, or both. Critics feared an emotion shared by Carter the detrimental side effects of depression through taxation, inflation through deficit, or both through both. Carter's ploy in the face of this situation is to tell people they're getting something they percent unemployment authorize or fund any jobs program, present or future; and (4) to permit presidential extension even of the goal's date, e.g. to allow it to be revised unto infinity if so decreed. Very clever. Leave the old Humphrey-Hawkin- s oratory, but pull all teeth and create a loophole as to end date. The unemployed will have their law. The treasury meanwhile will assume not even contingent augmented liability absent new congressional action. Perhaps too clever. What if the unemployed preceivc as already has the Rev. Jcssce Jackson that they just get words, not deeds? Or what if the overall electorate inspects this cosmetic proposal and decides theyve merely a cosmetic leader? If the latter is the case, Mr. Carter will discover that in trying to be all things to all men hes become nothing to anyone. vis-a-v- is Humphrey-Hawkin- so-call- ed 03 00S6RY5, IF QDQ OJU, THE s; VOOR LEFT. THE AU6RV 6V5 50F PfiSRAPATOU AMP RW6RIY. N Ladies and the conservative stampede by Parker O 0. CC UJ O O M. Nielson The just completed municipal elections might be recorded, not as having been determined by sexual bias as some are charging, but as ones in which Salt Lake City conservatives were victimized by their own mob psychology. The spectre I have in mind is the defeat of two well qualified candidates of the fair sex for the city commission. That sex played a part in their defeat is hard to deny, but there is considerable doubt over the motivation of those who voted against the ladies. Alice Shearer, a conservative Republican and somewhat of a political pro, and Marilee Latta, also a Republican, though of moderate and even liberal persuasion, are both intelligent, well known and ran savvy campaigns. Shearer ran second only to incumbent Glen Greener in the primary. Latta has connections with the downtown establishment, support in the Mayors office, and in the absence of two Democratic candidates even drew some highly placed backing from that party. Both had every reason to expect good results in the final election. Surprisingly, a virtual unknown male candidate eclipsed them both and badly. But these days when conservative and right wing factions are very much at work polarizing the voters in Salt Lake City, as as liquor they have so skilfully done on liberal issues such reform, government consolidation, right to work, capital punishment and freedom of expresion, the text of the slogans they use to stampede the electorate is usually not as important as their symbolism. is Georgia Peterson, arch foe of the feminist movement, leading a cadre of reactionary women who have succeeded in taking over the Utah IWY delegation. She says her purpose is issues to the national IWY convention. to present The Relief Society of the Mormon church sent out its volunteers to the Utah IWY convention to shout No, not just to ERA and progressive resolutions, but to anything and everything. In both instances the symbolic message seems to be that a woman's role is to bear children, change diapers and keep house not get involved with the issues confronting society. The feminists and IWY itself were tarred as pro-ERpro-fami- ly A. pro-abortio- n, hy and and the electorate may have equated all politically active women with those smears. Local government would surely profit from women of the caliber of Alice Shearer and Marilee Latta. Recent Gallup polls show that a heavy majority of voters feel that the country would be governed as well, or better, by women. Eighty percent of those questioned said they would vote for a qualified woman and 73 percent indicated they would vote for a woman' President. Arc the residents of Salt Lake Valley that different, or is it possible that these two quality candidates were defeated, not by male chauvanism, but by female and male voters alike who got their message from another conservative scare campaign that in this instance misfired? It is, perhaps, ironic that after so many liberal issues have been defeated by the stampede that the conservatives arc so skilled at triggering, two of their own may have been cut down, as it were, inadvertently. |