Letters 

Karma for Cops

I just read your article about Beau Babka, and I don't feel a bit sorry for him or anyone like him ["Behind the Badge," March 13, City Weekly].

I believe in karma; what goes around comes around. Doesn't he realize just how many people he has practically put in the same position that he is in?

The legislators make up victimless so-called crimes so they can rip off people's money and put it in their general fund that benefits them and whoever works for them. The police cause these people to lose their money and jobs as their families go without because of fines and legal feels. And less income coming in sometimes causes families to break up.

These lawmakers, police, courts and anyone that upholds them better think before they act, or it just might come back and bite them in the ass—just like it did to me.

West Valley

Time for a New Revelation

With Ordain Women again attempting to attend the priesthood session of LDS Conference, it seems a weak argument when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says, "Women in the church, by a very large majority, do not share ... advocacy for priesthood ordination for women and consider that position to be extreme" ["Ask Not," April 3, City Weekly].

Was not polygamy or priesthood for males of black African descent extreme? Did church members not obey these "extreme" new revelations?

LDS members have an extraordinary history of accepting new doctrine. I doubt anything could be more agonizing and extreme for women (and men) than Joseph Smith's proclamation in 1831 about polygamy.

Also difficult was when Spencer W. Kimball in 1978 announced that, "He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the church may receive the holy priesthood..."

If, one day, church authorities state that "every faithful, worthy [woman] in the church may receive the holy priesthood," I believe members would obey this new revelation, just as they have in the past obeyed other new revelations.

In an interview about his new book, Call to Action, former President Jimmy Carter asserts that many religions practice sexism. And as men are usually the ones in authority, why would they wish to give up and share with women their power?

Still, kudos to Ordain Women and many others who keep striving for equality.

Salt Lake City

Know Thy God

With the release of the movie Noah, fundamentalists are forced to ponder whether their god is loving, as depicted in the New Testament, or a god who takes psychotic pleasure in genocides.

If one supports the god of Noah and Sodom & Gomorrah, and one assumes these ancient communities were much like today's communities, the victims of God's wrath would likely have been made up of the following: people of all ages from the newborn to the quite elderly, people with physical and mental challenges, pregnant women, people who were attracted to the opposite gender and to the same gender, and people with a range of religious beliefs.

Down through the ages, various tribes, cults, religions and dictators have felt perfectly justified to kill all those who were not a part of the "chosen" people.

Taylorsville

NEW: (I'd rather not run this since it's about the Trib)

Reader Al Snyder's articulate Letter of the Week (March 16, The Salt Lake Tribune) barely scraped the surface of the LDS iceberg in denouncing the Utah Legislature, long ruled by provincial cultists. Besides "air pollution, autism, anti-depressant consumption and right-wing hyperbole," Utah leads or is among the nation's leaders in financial scams per capita, lowest public-school faculty salaries, fewest dollars spent per pupil, least emphasis on highway law enforcement, number of pedophiles involved as adult leaders with the Boy Scouts of America, least interest in environmental stewardship, anti-intellectualism. It also has the highest birth rate among all states, and consequentially has the most jam-packed classrooms, and is in ongoing violation of the U.S. Constitution, which promotes separation of church and state—a concept alien to Utah's preoccupied LDS legislators.

Snyder might also have noted the church's devious propensity to embellish. 1. Fifteen million members? An educated guess is that at least half of those do not tithe, do not attend services, have been attempting to ditch the church and remove their names from its roster for decades, and are resentful as adults to have been brainwashed into the organization as children. 2. The "mob" that killed church founder and noted tomcat Joseph Smith at the Carthage jail were not just rednecks and ruffians, as the church has successfully convinced the world, but bankers, farmers and merchants who, based on the predations of their male Mormon neighbors, feared for their own wives and daughters. Sexual predatory privilege has been a basic tenet of and attraction to Mormon men ever since that charismatic, uneducated, whacko kid "dug up" those gold tablets.

Moab

Pending

NEW: Extortion, Pure and Simple.

I was reading your "Young Immortal Care" article about getting young people to sign up for Obamacare in your "Best of Utah" issue of March 27. I can understand why anyone, young or old would be reluctant to sign up for Obamacare. I was helping my step-daughter sign up for Obamacare because she could not afford the healthcare options offered at her workplace. The least expensive healthcare option was offered by Humana Health Care and was $144 a month for a family plan. This plan, however, paid for absolutely nothing until she had reached the deductible of $12,600. It also did not include dental, so she would have to buy a separate dental plan. The $144 monthly fee does not go toward the deductible, so she would have to go to the doctor over 50 times in a year in order for this plan to start paying for anything. It is basically catastrophe insurance. If her, or one of her children's, appendix burst, she would only have to pay roughly half the cost. A broken leg, she would have to pay for herself. For a single mother trying to raise two kids on her own, $144 a month is a lot of money. But if she doesn't pay it, she gets fined 1 percent of her gross annual income. That would be about $250. It's extortion, plain and simple. It's like going to the store and deciding you don't want to buy their $1,500 dollar product. Then you find out that the doors are locked and you have to pay them $250 to get out.

Taylorsville

NEW: Governments Have Total Control

I want to comment on two former letters. Ms. Shlee's concerns about modifying the climate [Everyone's Out for Themselves, March 20, City Weekly] and Jeffe from Murray's Obama WWIII diatribe [Obama's Wars, March 27, City Weekly]. China openly bragged about steering a storm away from theBeijing Olympics. Chavezwent on international televisiona few years ago andsaidthe U.S. was "playingGod" by triggering earthquakes in Iran with electromagnetism. Putin has let his citizens know he can create any sort of weather conditions he likes. In fact, Russian Parliament Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky warned thatRussia has new weather technology that can"destroy any part of the planet." Pilot and Meteorologist Ben Livingston is credited with being the first person in the U.S. to use weather as a weapon during Vietnam. We are talking seriousbusiness when trained meteorologists can show evidence on radar images that Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, China quake, Indonesian tsunami and Philippines typhoonswere man-made and directed. Governments do not only attack other countries, but sometimes like to teach their own people a lesson. On March 1 around 10:30 p.m. EST an earthquake hit the Crimean Peninsula. Within an hour, Russian troops were saying it was a U.S.ionosphere heater and that they had every right to consider it a "weapon of mass destruction." Main-stream media refuses to report on any of this of course. Jeffe from Murray is right: Obama has started WWIII. China just bought the Federal Reserve too. Oh, I almost forgot tomention, this flash snowstorm that occurred on March 30 is quite possibly from an ELF weather machine. Especially considering the lightning. Your readers can easily learn how to differentiate between natural weather and this garbage.

Cottonwood Heights

Ms. Biele's commentary of Pamela Atkinson in poor taste.

If anyone would know about the homeless or the poor, it is definitely this wonderful woman and the associations that she supports. She personally has helped me and thousands of others get the help, housing and healthcare that we need to live a better life.

I agree that 70 percent or more of the panhandlers are not homeless or poor, but they do not frequent the shelters or Fourth Street Clinic. I have personally witnessed the same woman (for more than 5 years) that daily panhandles at the LDS Temple Downtown get into her 2013 Cadillac Escalade.

We should all get behind Pamela Atkinson and support the Road Home Shelter and Fourth Street Clinic to help the people that are really in need to make Salt Lake City better for everyone.

Respectfully,

(first email sent)

Pho Education

I have enjoy reading Dine in City Weekly for years. However, I have a little problem when it comes to ethnic foods, particularly about Vietnamese foods. In the most recent article on Pho Thin Vietnamese Noodle House, I would like to point out to Ted Scheffler that the pho he sampled was from the North of Vietnam, called Pho Bac (Bac=North). It is very different from the Southern pho soup. There are three different regions in Vietnam, and each has a very different cooking style. Pho is like barbecue in the U.S.: There are different variations, one restaurant makes better pho than others. Also there is a proper way to eat pho. I would like to invite you, Ted, to have lunch with me one day (my tab) and talk to you about Vietnamese foods and educate Utahns about Vietnamese foods.