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Show 5 OPINION www.dailyutahchronicle.com Monday December 2, 2013 NICK KETTERER/The Daily Utah Chronicle LUIGI GHERSI/The Daily Utah Chronicle Panhandlers are only con artists Columnist W e were warned. But instead of listening, we laughed, and what started as satire has now become stark reality. The creators of South Park prophesied of what would happen if we allowed ourselves to be tricked into giving money to panhandlers — they would spread like wildfire and eventually overtake us all. When Kyle foolishly gives a beggar $20 in the 2007 South Park episode "Night of the Living Homeless," he sets off a chain reaction of panhandling that nearly suffocates the city. An epidemic of panhandling has spread to nearly every freeway exit, shopping center and street corner in the Salt Lake Valley, but the problem is not the people begging for money — it's the people who are giving it. The age-old idiom "give somebody an inch, and they'll take a mile" proves accurate every time we give a panhandler a dollar. Instead of taking up one street corner they'll take up every street corner, and the demand will only increase. While at first it may seem strange to criticize people for giving money to those in need, the reality is that this act of kindness directly contributes to the increase in panhandling and indirectly facilitates drug addiction. Many panhandlers are neither homeless nor hungry — they are scam artists who, in most cases, are using your hard-earned money for drugs and alcohol. KUTV and KSL have reported that these scam artists are using the money they exploit from kindhearted citizens to sustain drug and alcohol addictions, and many of them are career criminals. Over the last six months, I have personally observed four panhandlers who operate near the 1-215 State Street exit, where they work a four-person rotation where one person begs while the others sit in the shade. They live in the government subsidized apartments nearby, and they pull in about $15 to $20 an hour. While that may not seem like a lot of money for four people to split, they don't pay taxes on the income, and they all admitted to being on welfare, which means they are actually making quite a bit of money at the public's expense. When I offered to buy them lunch for sharing these insights, they asked me for $20 instead and seemed less than thrilled when I insisted on buying them sandwiches. Gone are the days when people who panhandled were not only homeless but also looked the part as well. They have been replaced with a much younger crowd that doesn't even bother trying to look the part of destitute and wear designer clothing while talking on their cell phones. Yet they still choose to use ragged pieces of cardboard to deliver such messages as "Too ugly for prostitution," or "I hope you never have to be in my shoes." Surely if someone is making enough money to afford a cell phone bill they can drop a couple of dollars for some colored poster board. However, at the end of the day the problem is not so much these scam artists, but the people who insist on contributing to the problem by believing their stories and giving them money. Society has perverted the wise old proverb of "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." By giving these scam artists money, we are not only feeding their motivation to panhandle, we are convincing them that their efforts can be profitable on a daily basis. Last year a federal judge declared that an attempt by Utah to enact a law making panhandling illegal was unconstitutional, which means panhandlers have as much right to ask for your money as religious missionaries have to knock on your door. So the responsibility falls on us to say no to panhandlers as firmly as we would to those soliciting religion by simply closing the door and keeping our car windows rolled up. SMITH Columnist T here's always been something funny about the way the Senate works. Under the Senate rules, it takes 41 senators to filibuster a bill. Once a bill is filibustered, 6o senators must then vote to bring the bill back to the floor. Consequently, a considerable amount of legislation and confirmations in the Senate requires 6o votes to pass — what many call a supermajority. But there has always been a way around this supermajority. The Senate could simply use a majority vote to get rid of the filibuster — then, the requisite 6o votes to end the filibuster would magically disappear. This option isn't exactly easy, and in a lot of ways, it's a cheap trick. According to Senate Rule 22, two-thirds of the Senate - 67 votes - is required to end any kind of debate on proposals to amend Senate rules. This is a number even higher than normal filibuster conditions, making it seem like this route would be considerably more difficult to overcome than a simple filibuster. Enter the cheap trick. According to obscure parliamentary proceedings that, for some reason, the U.S. Senate follows, "tabling" a motion is a non-debatable ordeal. Anything that is non-debatable does not require more than 51 votes. So, the Senate could get rid of the filibuster by following these three steps: proposing to amend the filibuster rules; letting opponents appeal this proposal; or I Columnist voting to "table" the "appeal." It's a convoluted and ridiculous procedure that has always been only a hypothetical for Senate procedures — something that the Senate always had the power to do but has never done because of the dangerous precedent it would create. It's been a hypothetical until now, that is, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took these exact steps to circumvent Republican opposition to President Barack Obama's D.C. Circuit judicial nominees. His maneuver will have disastrous consequences. Reid technically only ended the filibuster for all executive nominees, excluding supreme court justices. But he effectively ended the filibuster for everything else as well. Reid opened the Pandora's Box to use this same cheap trick whenever any majority in the Senate wants to get its way but can't gain the 6o votes. The next time any kind of legislation gets stalled in the Senate because of a filibuster, the majority leader will not hesitate to replicate Reid's actions. The result will be a Senate where everything will only need to be passed with a majority vote. In other words the Senate will look like the House of Representatives, where the majority party does not have to consider the desires (or even existence) of the minority party to get anything done. Everything will become far more partisan. Compromise in the Senate will no longer exist. It's strange that Reid decided to do this now instead of at the beginning of the Obama presidency. It's strange because it is very possible that the Democrats will lose control of the Senate in the upcoming elections and become the minority party. Once they are the minority party, Reid will be the one to blame when they are completely and unapologetically ignored. The U.S. should not be run by pure majority politics. The filibuster has long been emblematic of a government that believes in compromise. With Reid's brash and arrogant actions, this badge of American compromise has disappeared, and it is unlikely to ever appear again. recently had the opportunity to attend the Salt Lake City Time Out for Women. The Maverik Center hosted the two-day conference where 8,000 women were in attendance. One of the presenters at this conference was Sandra Turley, who attended BYU and went on to play the role of Cosette on Broadway in "Les Miserables." Turley focused very little on her success as a singer, but instead focused on the phases of motherhood, highlighting her experiences with adopting a child, and then having that child taken back by its biological mother. This is a practice that should stop. It is unfair to the adoptive parents and the baby. According to a report from the Children's Bureau titled "Consent to Adoption," only two states - Massachusetts and Utah - have stated that, "all consents are irrevocable upon their execution." Other states allow anywhere from a few days to six months for the biological mother to change her mind. Requirements for revocation of consent vary by state. In her presentation, Turley spoke of the turmoil that she and her husband experienced while they tried to have a baby. They went to fertility clinics and experienced a miscarriage before deciding to adopt. They felt so lucky when they received a call that a baby girl was going to be born that would need a home. They quickly said yes and waited for the day that they could take their little girl home. At that time, the Turleys were living in New York. The state of New York allows a biological mother 45 days to change her mind after giving consent. Close to day 4o, they received a call that they would need to take their new baby back to its mother. Needless to say, they were devastated. The story does have a happy ending, however — Turley now has four children she was able to conceive with medical assistance. Turley's story may have ended happily, but it still pains her to think of the baby that was hers for just five weeks. While this is not a common occurrence, and most biological mothers don't take their babies back, it is still heartbreaking when it does happen. According to "Consent to Adoption," "adoption is meant to create a permanent and stable home for a child; therefore, a validly executed relinquishment and consent to adopt is intended to be final and irrevocable." From this statement, it is obvious that allowing a biological mother to take a child back goes against every intention of adoption. What is even crazier is that most states require a waiting period to pass before consent can be executed, with fifteen days being the longest waiting period. This waiting period is meant to give the mother time to decide if giving the baby up will be the best thing for the child. It is not fair to the child or the adoptive parents for the mother to change her mind after signing the papers. It uproots the child and devastates the adoptive parents. Adoption is obviously a tough subject. Deciding to give up a child is an extremely hard decision. In order to lessen the unavoidable pain of adoption, each state should require a waiting time and make consent irrevocable after execution, unless the child is being mistreated or was obtained by fraud, duress or coercion. Adoption is hard, but also worth it. Every child deserves the best chance possible, and adoption can give that to them. But in order for it to be effective, fully executed adoptions need to stay finalized, even if the biological parents change their mind. letters@chronicle.utah.edu letters@chronicle.utah.edu letters@chronicle.utah.edu Senate should not be majority ruled STEVENSON All adoptions should be irrevocable once consent is awarded |