<![CDATA[Jay Evensen - Opinions]]>

<![CDATA[Jay Evensen - Opinions]]>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:46:18 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Sports gambling scandals just keep coming]]>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 21:34:38 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/sports-gambling-scandals-just-keep-comingAt a time when gamblers and sports are getting warm and cozy in front of the glow of endlessly televised games, it’s hardly shocking that scandals keep popping up in endzones.
Surely, this isn’t the first generation to discover that the pursuit of easy money can brush aside health, safety or even the integrity of athletics.
This may, however, be the first to energetically embrace sports gambling and be shocked at the results.

A Texas judge on Monday ruled that Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who had made thousands of online bets on games, including ones involving his own team when he wasn’t playing, should be eligible to keep playing despite a permanent ban handed down by the NCAA. To this, the college world reacted like police captain Renault in the classic film, Casablanca, who, in a memorable scene, searches for a pretense to shut down a nightclub.
“I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” he says with feigned indignity, while a croupier conveniently hands him his winnings.
Concerning Sorsby, Mike Florio wrote for NBC Sports, “Ultimately, everyone connected to the situation is doing what they would be expected to do. A Texas judge issued a favorable ruling for a Texas school. Texas Tech is supporting Sorsby. Other schools are attacking Texas Tech.”
And no one seems overly concerned about a young man who, earlier this year, checked himself into a residential treatment program for problem gamblers.
These addictions are not just quaint little problems. They cause people to lose control over their urges and behaviors. They destroy lives. They cause people to continue placing bets despite being aware of the consequences.
Writing for the American Psychological Association, contributor Emily Sohn said, “People in their early 20s are the fastest-growing group of gamblers, according to recent research. And many kids are starting younger than that.
“Nearly two-thirds of adolescents, ages 12 to 18, said they had gambled or played gambling-like games in the previous year, according to a 2018 Canadian survey of more than 38,000 youth funded by the government of British Columbia.”
Don’t kid yourself. Gambling companies understand this well.
In an op-ed published in March by the Wall Street Journal, college quarterback Eli Thompson wrote about the plague sweeping across campuses.
“What starts out as a seemingly harmless diversion quickly becomes a trap,” he said. “I’ve had friends who have lost hundreds, lied to their families and pulled away from the team, all while chasing the rush of a winning bet that may never arrive.”
“Today’s college sports culture makes betting feel like a rite of passage,” he said, and many gambling companies “make it all too easy to pick up the habit.”
They spread enticing messages that become the wallpaper of the sporting world, with “slick marketing campaigns” … and “celebrity-endorsed ads hyping the thrill of a quick win on TikTok and Instagram ….”
When people inevitably become hopelessly and destructively hooked, few offer any help.
Two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that “the companies collect customers’ betting habits, including gathering data on how much time players spend on the app, how much they gamble, what kind of bets they place and how much they lose.” Often they bestow VIP status on those who gamble the most and find ways to encourage them to do even more.
“Psychologists who study gambling addiction say that data could be used to identify customers with a problem,” the Journal said.
Against this backdrop, the Texas judge’s decision to grant an injunction allowing Sorsby to play was cruel. The NCAA and other schools were right to be outraged. However, everyone should also acknowledge the many enablers — from politicians who have made sports gambling legal, to leagues that take a share of the winnings, to predatory gambling companies, and to everyday people who value touchdowns over lives.
We should hope that Sorsby’s decision to check into a rehab facility pays off and that he can divert himself from a destructive path. We should hope he can surround himself with people who have his best interests at heart.
And we should hope the rest of society learns from the wisdom of past generations and turns itself, once and for all, away from legal gambling before it destroys the integrity of all games.

]]><![CDATA[Despite hating the rich, Americans want to join them]]>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 21:32:18 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/despite-hating-the-rich-americans-want-to-join-themWealth can be a delicate topic.
Despite the anti-rich sentiment in far-left political circles these days (including some of the recently unsuccessful candidates for Utah’s new first congressional district), most people still want to join the ranks of the wealthy.
And more people each year are succeeding.

This isn’t just an American thing, but Americans are particularly good at it.
However, the bigger question may be whether they are any good at handling it. A lot has been written about the relationship between poverty and mental illnesses and emotional stress. But some experts are warning that excessive wealth can lead to stresses and problems, as well.
I know, I know. You’d still like to swap your current situation for some of those stresses and problems. You’re not alone.
The Wall Street Journal this week reported that the number of ultra wealthy people worldwide (defined by the wealth-intelligence firm Altrata as those having a net worth of at least $30 million) soared by 14.4% last year to 556,850.
Of these, 37%, by far the largest share, live in the United States.
AI and its opportunities for investment and innovation is being singled out as a factor in this. But inheritance is a big and growing wealth-maker, as well.
Bank of America reports that members of the millennial and Gen X generations (defined broadly as those aged 30 to 61) are projected to receive about $18 trillion from wills and probate courts over the coming decade. This “great wealth transfer,” as many are calling it, has already begun.
Politicians can argue all day about tax policies or the divide between rich and poor. Perhaps a bigger question is whether the newly rich are prepared to handle their wealth without losing things that really matter.
David H. Rosmarin is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a program director at McLean Hospital, wrote an essay for Time magazine recently in which he said his interactions with wealthy people have shown him how money can “weaken the very foundations that sustain psychological well-being.”
Money, he said, changes relationships.
When money isn’t an object, Rosmarin said, people no longer have to compromise, negotiate, forgive or sacrifice — things that strengthen bonds. Maturity and wisdom come through challenges.
He used the example of a wealthy family whose son had a gambling problem. Rather than facing consequences, the parents routinely covered his losses, totaling nearly a million dollars over several years.
“Each bailout was intended to help,” he wrote. “Indeed, this approach preserved peace in the short term by postponing difficult conversations. But the gambling worsened, and eventually so did the family dynamics. By the time they came to my office, their son was estranged.”
Money had changed the relationship.
“Rather than confronting a painful reality — which parents with more limited resources would have been forced to do — the parents used money to insulate themselves, thereby creating a bigger problem than had they not been so wealthy.”
Instead of money, the son needed boundaries and accountability.
For most of us, he said, life imposes limits. With endless money, families often buy emotional distancing and pain; loneliness instead of community and belonging.
Religious faith can be a grounding force. Years ago, the Deseret News commented on a report by the Chronicle of Philanthropy that showed Utah and several other Bible Belt states leading the nation in charitable giving.
Wealthy people tend to give less — unless, that is, they are made aware of the plight of the poor. In addition to religious teachings about charity, congregations often bring rich and poor together to worship and minister, offering glimpses into other socio-economic classes.
None of this is to suggest it’s wrong to seek the security of greater wealth. There is something ennobling about working hard to provide security for loved ones. It’s just that wealth shouldn’t be all people seek. A nation filled with people who inherited wealth could easily miss the self-discipline needed to raise the next generation.
Despite what any left-wing politician might say, however, Americans aren’t going to stop trying to get rich any time soon.
Writing about tariffs for The Atlantic last year, Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam and senior fellow Charles Fain Lehman cited statistics to show how deeply Americans care about wealth.
“Roughly 79% describe their money as ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important to them,” they wrote.
“American parents put a far greater weight on their children being ‘financially independent’ and having an enjoyable career than they do on those children getting married or having children themselves,” they said.
Which raises a whole new set of problems.

]]><![CDATA[Is Vladimir Putin going to strike NATO?]]>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:33:54 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/is-vladimir-putin-going-to-strike-natoCould Donald Trump’s recent decision to draw down U.S. troops from allied European nations embolden Vladimir Putin to spread his flagging war in Ukraine to some of NATO’s smaller nations along the Baltic Sea?
A Russian drone struck an apartment building Friday in Romania, injuring two people. It was the sort of incursion into a NATO country that heightened tensions but probably didn’t rise to the level of widening the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Russia is becoming adept at that sort of thing, pushing the limits of the alliance.
Sweden, for instance, has been putting up with acts of sabotage in recent months. Politico reports that the strategic Swedish island of Gotland, a key to controlling the Baltic Sea, has a list of such attacks, including a water leak caused by sabotage to a critical pump, the severing of a fiber optic cable under the sea and a spate of radio interference affecting emergency services and aircraft communications.
Michael Claesson, Sweden’s defense chief, called these attacks concerning. “Obviously the Russian doctrine … is actually to try to identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities and do whatever they can to exploit them,” he told Politico.
In Lithuania, air raid sirens forced the government into a bunker last week because of concerns that Russia drones were approaching Latvian air space.
In America, few of these stories get attention. Europe’s problems rank far down the list of daily concerns — certainly below the war in Iran, with its immediate impact on gas prices and inflation. But they dominate discussions in Europe, as I have learned through recent trips to Sweden.
Many experts are predicting they could suddenly dominate America’s attention, too, if the worst happens. Would President Trump honor the nation’s agreements to fully defend its NATO allies?
Trump recently announced the withdrawal of about 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany and canceled the deployment of a battalion trained in long-range precision strikes. As an essay in Foreign Affairs noted, he also called into question the need for a rotating combat team headed for Poland, much as he had canceled one bound for Romania last year.
The author of that essay, Penn Washington’s executive director and former assistant secretary of defense during the Biden administration Celeste A. Wallander, noted that “the Pentagon has informed NATO that it will shrink the forces Washington would rapidly deploy to Europe in a crisis — that is, in the event of a Russian attack on alliance territory.
Wallander and others believe Putin is watching with interest. The drawdown, she said, increases the risk of a nuclear showdown.
“By pulling the unit and signaling that the United States will commit less to reinforce the alliance in a crisis, the Trump administration has effectively delegated conventional defense to Europe, weakening the elements of deterrence Moscow fears most,” she wrote. “Now, Russia could be tempted to seize territory in the Baltics or Poland through its client state Belarus and dare NATO to escalate, knowing that its doctrine permits limited nuclear strikes against even conventional forces that threaten newly held territory.”
But why would Putin do such a reckless thing at a time when, according to the Wall Street Journal, Russian forces are suffering casualties in Ukraine numbering about 35,000 per month?
The answer is in the question, according to Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy. Russia needs to recruit a lot more soldiers.
“If you just mobilize for this war (in Ukraine), then you would send a signal that you are not really winning this war,” the Journal quoted her saying. “So there comes the point where they need to escalate in order to justify the mobilization. And that’s a very dangerous point.
“Of course, nobody sees in the head of Putin, but this could be the calculus to move forward and change the linearity of this war.”
Others note that Putin is well aware of the Trump administration’s lack of enthusiasm for NATO and how the war in Iran has raised fuel prices in Europe, as well.
The Journal quoted Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson saying, “The security environment in Europe has deteriorated during the last 24 months, and we see a greater inclination from the Russian side to take greater operational risks in their hybrid operations, moving up also to kinetic elements.”
All of this chatter must be tempered by the fact that Russia shows no signs of amassing soldiers or military assets for an attack on any NATO country. World War III is not imminent.
This also isn’t the first time Europe has sounded alarms about Russian belligerence.
What makes this different, however, is the backdrop of what appears to be waning U.S. support for Europe. As Wallander wrote for Foreign Affairs, “Moscow will be deterred only by an integrated strategy that promises Russian failure.”
For a jittery Europe, it would be nice if the United States would send a strong message of support.

]]><![CDATA[Can Congress fix Social Security by 2032?]]>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:31:25 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/can-congress-fix-social-security-by-2032If you’re receiving Social Security payments, could you make due with $523 less than you are currently getting?
And if the day comes when you do see such a cut, who would you blame?
The question isn’t some remote hypothetical. Experts now predict Social Security’s main Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund will become insolvent in 2032, a scant six years from now.

As a newly released report from the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes the fund would then be able to fund only 76% of its current benefits.
For years, I’ve noted that politicians tend to avoid dealing with problems that won’t become emergencies during their time in office. But those days are ending. As the report notes, insolvency is “projected to occur during the terms of the next elected Senators and President.”
So, who will you blame? The current president and Congress or the many who came before and did nothing to head off a crisis?
My money is on the set of leaders who will be in office at the time. That’s human nature. But, as the report said, “Yet we have known for 42 years that, without changes, Social Security would become insolvent.
“And for the last 16 years, the cost of Social Security’s retirement program has exceeded its cash income, forcing it to pay benefits in part by using its trust fund reserves.”
Like so many monetary crises, this one is taking years and years to slowly develop, but when the tipping point comes, it’s likely to leap out at us suddenly, as if by surprise.
So, what will a Social Security program limping at 76% look like? That’s the gist of the report, and it’s not good news for Utahns.
The report includes an analysis of the likely benefit cuts by state. Utah is tied for ninth highest in that category, at $523 per month, which the report said is more than the average senior citizen spends on groceries per month. The cuts would affect an estimated 423,029 Utahns, or 12.1% of the current population, impacting 0.08% of the state’s GDP.
At the least, it would leave thousands of seniors struggling to meet their obligations, which may be even more difficult today if the current inflation rate continues.
The report says today’s “candidates and policymakers must decide how they will secure a program vital to millions of Americans. That starts with putting forward a plan …”
I have participated in interviews with nearly every candidate and office holder in Utah for many years now. With the exception of two Democrats running this year for the 1st congressional district — Nate Blouin and Michael Farrell — nearly all have listed either the national debt or Social Security reform among their priorities.
To be fair, many of them have introduced credible bills to fix those things in various ways, but none has gained traction in a Congress preoccupied with partisanship and an aversion to compromise on important issues.
Solutions aren’t elusive. They generally involve a combination of raising the retirement age for young workers, reducing benefits for wealthier retirees, raising the current $184,500 cap on taxable income or enacting small tax hikes.
Yet, in 2023, President Biden shut off debate on the matter when, during his state of the union address, he accused Republicans of wanting to destroy Social Security. As I wrote at the time, It was political theater designed to draw a clear line between the parties. Republicans erupted in catcalls denying the charge.
After that speech, it seemed as if a bipartisan agreement had been forged to leave Social Security alone at all costs. But, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s report makes clear, Social Security won’t leave politicians alone — not for much longer, in any case.
The program never was meant to be a personal retirement account, but for too many people it is their only source of income in old age.
“One-in-five Americans – 63 million in total – would be impacted if Social Security’s retirement program faced a 24% cut today,” the report said. That includes about 54 million retired people and 9 million who collect as survivors and dependents. If one thing can be said about this group, it is that they vote.
Maybe, when the time comes, Congress will simply change the rules and vote to fund the program fully through general income tax collections, adding the total to the yearly deficit and the ballooning national debt.
But that would be merely trading one problem for a much larger and more serious one. Either way, unless real solutions are enacted, the day surely will come when angry people will look for someone to blame.

]]><![CDATA[Why AI will be good for the economy]]>Fri, 22 May 2026 19:38:53 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/why-ai-will-be-good-for-the-economyAbout once a generation, Harvard economics professor Richard Cooper told a podcast in 2018, “we have a near panic by some people because technology is destroying jobs.”
When I was a child, the worry was described in one word, “automation.” Machines were performing tasks much faster than humans, whose services no longer would be needed.
But the history of this worry goes back much farther, at least to the cotton gin.

“Think of cloth-making back in the early 19th century or automobile-making in the early 20th century,” Cooper said.
“Automobiles, the internal-combustion engine, destroyed a whole industry — the carriages and horses to pull them, right? There were lots of jobs lost as a result of this new technology, an internal-combustion engine on wheels.”
But the often-forgotten lesson from those times is that the new technologies always resulted in many more new jobs.
Of course, that didn’t end the suffering of middle-aged buggy whip makers or the makers of carriages.
Which brings me to artificial intelligence.
The focus right now is on the large data centers this technology relies upon to do its thinking. President Donald Trump recently said these “need some PR help,” which is one statement from the president that won’t get much opposition.
Robots, artificial companions and data centers seem poised, like a tsunami, to wash ashore and upend life as we know it forever.
The flood already has started, and the nation is having a moment, of sorts. Many people seem to be rallying behind opposition to both data centers and AI.
Utah is part of this. Despite the urgings of political leaders, a proposed data center in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley is opposed by many people in the Beehive State. Legitimate questions about environmental impacts and liabilities abound, and some politicians seem clueless about the need to lead rather than push the issue.
But the script is the same as it has been throughout modern history, with perhaps a troubling caveat or two.
Early in the 20th century, the automobile spawned a host of new careers from manufacturing to car repair to highway construction and long-haul trucking.
The problem, Susan Lund, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, based in Washington, told that same podcast is that we can see the people who will be losing jobs, but “we can’t often foresee the new occupations that are going to be created from a technology.”
Personal computers, for instance, made the internet commonplace and eventually led to smartphones, influencers and a huge demand for computer programmers and call center workers. In exchange, “we didn’t need as many typists. We didn’t need as many office-machine manufacturers. Secretaries used to take dictations of memos from executives, using shorthand, and then go type them up. That wasn’t needed with the advent of the personal computer. And increasingly, executives started writing their own memos.”
But the net impact on jobs was positive.
How many jobs will be lost for good because AI can draft memos, instantly turn audio into transcripts, produce analytical spreadsheets and reports and write persuasive letters?
How many will be displaced if robots can do household chores or provide basic care for the elderly?
The worries are legitimate, but the long-term prognosis is positive.
That’s true even though Lund said that, worldwide “up to 375 million people may need to learn an entirely new occupation.”
That will require huge efforts toward teaching new skills.
I mentioned a couple of caveats.
Lund and Cooper said previous technological revolutions have transitioned over a decade or two. Horse experts and saddle and buggy makers were still needed for several years after cars were introduced.
AI seems to be approaching with great speed, although its full impact may take many years.
Another is those pesky data centers. At the moment, they are necessary. The United States does not want to fall behind in the race to dominate this new technology, both commercially and for military purposes. But the impacts of these centers on the environment need a thorough vetting, as well as the possibility they might become obsolete.
And finally, this revolution can be used for nefarious purposes, perhaps more than any previous tech revolutions.
As Hari Kunzru wrote recently for artforum.com, “Generative AI now allows the production of disinformation at scale. … Thousands of fake people — tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands — making videos, posting in forums, astroturfing entire contexts in which people will live out their political lives.”
Is this truly a cause for hand-wringing, or an opportunity for entrepreneurs with solutions that could spawn new careers?
History tells us which side to bet on.

]]><![CDATA[Are Republicans finally standing up to Trump?]]>Fri, 22 May 2026 19:33:53 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/are-republicans-finally-standing-up-to-trumpCould this be the act that gives Republican members of Congress the backbone to stand up to the president?
Any clear-eyed review of President Donald Trump’s “settlement” providing $1.776 billion for him to reward people, possibly including those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 would see it as wrong, and that’s a big concern during an already contentious election year.
Remove politics and partisanship and it becomes easy to see.
A president sues the IRS, an agency he controls, then decides to settle out of court, essentially negotiating with himself. That settlement gives him the aforementioned sum to reward victims of “lawfare” unconnected to the suit — victims identified by a panel he controls. It’s a clear conflict of interest.

Also, the president, who believes he was unfairly treated by the IRS has, along with his family, been given immunity from any audits — putting him above the law.
The justice system simply shouldn’t work that way.
Not that it hasn’t been inching there over recent administrations from both parties.
The founders established a Constitution designed, through checks and balances, to keep any one of the three branches of government from consolidating power and engaging in unchecked corruption. If corruption is blatant, it is because one of those checks has failed.
Unfortunately, Congress has through the years abdicated its role in that regard.
Maybe that’s changing.
President Trump succeeded in ousting Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy in a recent primary. He has endorsed a Republican challenger to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Both were apparent retaliations for disloyalty. But both turned those Republicans against the president for the rest of this year.
The $1,776 billion “lawfare” fund was seen as instrumental in motivating Republicans to stall an immigration crackdown bill and a $1 billion for security, including at the president’s new White House ballroom.
The New York Times quoted prominent Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell saying, “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”
The upcoming election appears to now be stronger than the sway of a president who will be a lame duck once the final ballot is cast this November.
The president’s poll numbers have dropped, even in Utah.
It’s important to note that Trump’s actions were not the first questionable uses of presidential power. President Joe Biden issued his son Hunter a full and unconditional pardon in December of 2024 — an act that also was repugnant. Hunter was the first child of an active president to be convicted of a crime. He had pleaded guilty to tax evasion and found guilty of illegal drug use while possessing a gun.
We’re certain many fathers of convicted children feel as Biden, the father, did. However, only a president could do something about it, and that was unseemly.
Even the practice of rewarding unconnected third parties to a litigation isn’t new. In what now seems a lesson in political irony, Trump’s first-term attorney general, Jeff Sessions, issued a department-wide memo prohibiting any settlement agreement on behalf of the United States that would result in payments “to non-governmental, third parties that were not directly harmed by the conduct,” according to a press release issued at the time.
That came in response to an Obama administration settlement that had directed banks to contribute to various Democrat-friendly organizations in a case concerning questionable lending practices leading up to the great recession.
“When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people — not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power,” Sessions said in the press release that now seems quaintly old fashioned.
Politicians can twist reason to make victims out of just about anybody, but Americans deserve better.
The normalization of presidents abusing the justice system is a cause to mourn, even if it involves mechanisms that are legal. It is a violation of trust, and it is beneath the dignity of the office. The more it becomes normal practice, the more it adds to the cynicism and distrust already metastasizing through the American body politic.
To be fair, Trump said he had nothing to do with the settlement that resulted in the fund for people mistreated by the government. But the money will be doled out by a five-person panel whose members Trump can freely fire.
Congress, regardless of which party is in power, has been largely docile in recent years. Maybe that will now change.

]]><![CDATA[It's 2026; where's my self-driving car?]]>Fri, 15 May 2026 20:23:04 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/its-2026-wheres-my-self-driving-carA few weeks ago in Wuhan, China — a city that boasts thousands of supposedly driverless taxis — a whole bunch of them came to a stop on roadways, reportedly because of a “system malfunction” as Technology Magazine reported it.
These were taxis operated by a company called Apollo Go. While passengers could open their doors, many considered that ill-advised as they were stopped on high-speed highways. However, they could do nothing to get the cars moving again.

The publication said one customer was stuck on an overpass for 90 minutes, trying over and over to reach customer service. Instead, the customer’s order was cancelled.
For years, my worst nightmare has been to be careening toward a cliff in an autonomous vehicle that has been hacked by a sinister ne’er do well. It’s kind of a modern twist on the 1920s film meme of being tied to a railroad track with a locomotive bearing down. But now I have to worry about being stalled on a freeway with a malfunction while traffic zips by, trying to avoid me.
To say nothing of the idea that air taxis may fill the skies by the time the Olympics return to Utah in 2034.
The future may be exciting, but I think I’ll keep chancing life in my 20-year-old six-speed manual-transmission Volvo, thank you.
Meanwhile, in California, about 3,000 people have joined a class action lawsuit against Tesla. The New York Post reported that the lead plaintiff bought a car in 2017 and paid thousands extra for a lifetime of self-driving software updates. Today, his car still isn’t completely autonomous, and his hardware may not be capable of handling it if the technology was available.
The plaintiff alleges Tesla is marketing vehicles as fully autonomous, when they are not.
All of which has me once again wondering, it’s 2026 — where is my fully self-driving car?
I first asked that question in a column in 2020. If you were to travel back to the mid-teens, you would see that 2020 was central to the predictions of many about a driverless world. In 2015, Business Insider published a piece headlined, “10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020.”
“Self-driving cars are no longer a futuristic idea,” it began, noting that many manufacturers were about to introduce features allowing a car “some ability to drive itself.”
“Some,” it turns out, is a big word.
That same year, The Guardian quoted BMW’s Michael Aeberhard as saying, “We think sometime after 2020 we will be ready for the first highly automated function, which means that the driver will be actually able to do something other than monitor the system — read emails, call somebody, check the news, whatever.”
To be clear, I sometimes see people on I-15 doing one or more of those things, but not in self-driving cars.
Well, 2020 blew by in a pandemic-smudged blur. Now, it’s six years later and the best expert guesses I can find predict fully self-driving cars won’t be available until around 2035, but even that isn’t certain.
Experts measure autonomous driving on six levels, from zero to five, with level 5 being completely self-driving, meaning it has no steering wheel or pedals and no need for monitoring by a human.
A blog this month by patent attorney Bao Tran, published by patentpc.com, says, “The closest we have today is Level 2+ and Level 3 autonomy, where cars can drive themselves under certain conditions but still require human intervention.”
That is true despite all the hype and innuendo by some of the 40-plus companies that are working on the technology. He said Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, and Baidu Apollo are leading the way toward the level 5 “holy grail.” Those who are operating taxi services are gaining valuable on-the-ground experience, but often at the expense of customers, such as the man in Arizona who wanted to go to the airport but ended up driving in circles.
Level 5 would require a vehicle to respond to an endless array of circumstances, including weather, road signs covered in graffiti, construction projects, traffic police using hand gestures, subtle nods from drivers yielding the right-of-way at a four-way stop or unusual merge patterns at freeway interchanges.
This doesn’t mean we won’t get there. I just hope that happens before I need a car to get me to and from my doctor appointments after I retire, without leaving me stranded on an overpass.

]]><![CDATA[Tired old conspiracy theories get recycled]]>Fri, 15 May 2026 20:20:36 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/tired-old-conspiracy-theories-get-recycledConspiracy theories seem to rise and gain traction quicker than a Stephen King novel these days.
But before you assign the crazy narratives associated with the recent attempted attack on President Donald Trump to just another chapter in this modern phenomenon, consider this:
The first assassination attempt against a president happened on Jan. 30, 1835. An out-of-work housepainter named Richard Lawrence approached President Andrew Jackson after the funeral of a member of Congress and tried to shoot him. Lawrence carried two guns. Both of them misfired, giving Jackson enough time to launch an assault of his own on Lawrence, using a cane. Others, including members of Congress who also were exiting the funeral, joined in.
It was one of the most extraordinary moments in U.S. history. And as theweek.com describes it, conspiracy theories soon followed.

Jackson’s supporters spread the rumor that the assailant had been seen recently at the home of Jackson-hater Sen. George Poindexter. They must have been plotting the attack, the story went.
Not long after, the other side countered by saying the president staged the whole assassination attempt to make himself look good. That’s why the guns conveniently didn’t fire.
Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.
Fast-forward 191 years. Within hours of a gunman’s failed attempt to shoot his way into the hotel ballroom where Trump was waiting to speak to the White House Correspondents’ Association, the internet was full of posts suggesting it was all staged in order to increase support for construction of a ballroom at the White House.
Another version says Trump wanted to reverse his sagging poll numbers.
My first takeaway is that this nation’s conspiracists are pathetically lacking in originality. One hundred ninety one years later and they’re still pushing the same narrative?
My second is that staging such a hoax would require a vast buy-in from interested parties, including the president’s security detail. That would require them setting aside personal pride and dedication to duty, to name a couple of unlikely factors. Getting a pretend gunman to risk his life, or at least a lengthy prison sentence, would be problematic, as well.
And then there were all the other people in the ballroom, especially the journalists. Any one of them could win a major award and instant notoriety uncovering such a plot. A conspirator’s first concern is to consider the venue. The only worse setting would have been a police convention.
The Washington Post said this “rush to (conspiratorial) judgment” was “marked and potent.” Perhaps it indicates Trump’s disfavor in some MAGA circles as well as from those on the left. As usual, people began to parse irrelevant actions by some in attendance, assigning sinister undertones to ordinary behavior during an extraordinary and stressful moment.
Fox’s correspondent Aishah Hasnie had to explain that she was cut off during a live report from the scene because her cell service dropped, not because network bosses didn’t want her to expose a phony assassination plot.
And yes, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said before the event that there would be “some shots fired tonight.” Taken in context, however, she clearly was referencing the content of the speech the president never got to deliver.
One scholarly study of conspiracy theories, published a few years ago by the National Library of Medicine, said, “Evidence suggests that the aversive feelings that people experience when in crisis — fear, uncertainty, and the feeling of being out of control — stimulate a motivation to make sense of the situation …”
Fear, uncertainty and the feeling of being out of control — if those things were water, the West could solve its drought. The problem is, the truth is often much simpler than we imagine, and politics often disappoints.
Not long after the botched attempt in 1835, Jackson’s assailant claimed to be King George III and accused the president of killing his father. He was sentenced to an asylum.
In other words, he was a classic lone wolf — an all-too-familiar thing that rarely brings sense to a scary world.

]]><![CDATA[Hantavirus is not the new COVID-19]]>Fri, 15 May 2026 20:17:35 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/hantavirus-is-not-the-new-covid-19Illnesses on a cruise ship aren’t new. Often, people contract the Norovirus, also known endearingly as the vomiting bug.
But when a special strain of Hantavirus — one that can transmit from humans to humans — shows up and starts killing passengers, a lot of people start worrying that it might be early 2020 all over again.

Well, you can relax a bit. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called this a 'level 3' emergency response, which is the lowest level of ‌emergency ⁠activation. Experts say the risk to the general public is low. Also, the CDC and the State Department are watching the 17 Americans who were aboard the Hondius closely to see if they exhibit any symptoms.
So, this is not likely a COVID-like emergency that’s going to have Americans at each other’s throats again.
That doesn’t mean something like that can’t, or won’t, happen again. A global preparedness coalition called CEPI reckons we have about a 38% chance of experiencing another big one during our lifetimes.
I might feel a little better about that if we had handled the last pandemic a little better.
Years ago, I used to wonder at how the 1918-19 influenza pandemic became known as “America’s forgotten pandemic.” How could a nation forget about a life-changing illness that killed an estimated 675,000 Americans and disrupted families and communities?
“Whatever the reason, Americans didn’t seem to want to talk about their experience during the pandemic,” journalist Becky Little wrote for History.com. “And because they were reluctant to talk or write about the pandemic, future generations weren’t always aware of it.”
Not that they could erase all the evidence. Anyone who wants to check old newspapers can find evidence of the devastation, as well as stories about people refusing to wear masks, or cutting holes in them to fit a cigar.
But I’m wondering if we’re much different from people a century ago. Pandemics are messy, especially in a free society. Governments, operating with incomplete information about new diseases, make mistakes. Public health recommendations evolve and sometimes contradict themselves.
It didn’t help that the current head of the CDC, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (also head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health) recently blocked publication of a study showing COVID vaccines approximately cut in half the chances an adult would need an ER visit or hospitalizations last fall and winter.
I’m reminded of a 352-page book published in 2023 by medical, policy, biodefense and advocacy professionals who took a dry-eyed look at America’s response to the pandemic.
“No country’s performance is more disappointing than that of the United States,” the book said, noting the vast wealth and technical know-how of the country should have led to better outcomes.
As the Deseret News noted in a 2024 editorial, the book blamed health officials and politicians, among others, for not anticipating the lack of public trust and strategizing on ways to counter it.
“Facing a dangerous pandemic, they adopted the broadest, most ambitious and intrusive set of government controls on social behavior in the history of the United States,” the authors said.
And yet, that sort of strategizing for a distrustful public isn’t as easy as it may sound.
Things may not be as bad as they seem. Andrew Thurston, writing for Boston University’s The Brink, noted that, in our favor, “we’ve done this before and we have a lot of new tools – from vaccines to monitoring technology – to deploy.”
On the other side of the ledger, however, he quotes Nahid Bhadelia of BU’s Center on Emerging Infection Diseases, saying hesitancy and health misinformation remain problems. She also believes climate change increases the chances for another outbreak and health disparities put everyone in greater danger.
All of this is exacerbated by an administration that is vaccine-averse.
As I said, pandemics are messy. Fortunately, we are unlikely to have to worry about this from a handful of hantavirus patients on a cruise ship.
But if that 38% for a future pandemic ever hits home, I’m not sure those of us who lived through COVID will be any more help than the “forgotten” survivors of 1918-19 would have been for us.

]]><![CDATA[Why Sweden is embracing capitalism]]>Fri, 15 May 2026 20:14:49 GMThttp://www.jayevensen.com/opinions/why-sweden-is-embracing-capitalismThe American left apparently hopes to make headway this year with the worn-out but catchy slogan. “tax the rich!”
You hear it in New York City, where newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to impose a "pied-à-terre" tax on second homes worth more than $5 million. You hear it now in Utah’s newly designed first congressional district, where Democrats have a new-found voice and are using it to say words like, “wealth tax.”
Where you don’t hear it, oddly, is in Sweden, which once was touted as an example of a nation that successfully combined democratic principles with socialist cradle-to-grave government programs

Today it is a country that, as the Wall Street Journal reported this week, is learning to love capitalism.
The Journal said half the nation’s primary healthcare clinics now are privately owned. And for those closely watching Utah’s foray into the private-school voucher-like Utah Fits All scholarship program, it’s worth noting that a third of Sweden’s high schools are privately run, and that the companies operating these schools are listed on the stock exchange.
“The capitalist makeover has allowed Sweden to do what few industrialized countries have managed in recent years: shrink the size of the state,” the Journal’s global economics correspondent Tom Fairless wrote. “That has enabled the government to sharply lower taxes and, economists say, sparked a surge in entrepreneurship and economic growth.”
Allowing people to keep more of their own money spurs investment, innovation and entrepreneurship. That’s hardly news, but sometimes nations have to learn it the hard way.
In the interest of total disclosure, I have to note my deep ties to Sweden. Years ago I served a church mission there, and my wife, who was born there, shares inheritance rights to a family home in a small Swedish town. We visit often.
Through the years, I’ve experienced the best and worst of Sweden. I’ve spoken with hard-working immigrants who long to leave (the government, once welcoming to outsiders, now offers grants worth roughly $34,000 for those willing to go back to where they came from). I’ve talked to people willing to share reasons why the nation’s socialized healthcare system doesn’t work. But I’ve also seen how that system provided life-saving round-the-clock home care for an elderly relative in exchange for very little out-of-pocket expense, and I’ve seen how many people there voluntarily sort their trash into various bins for specialized recycling purposes because they believe in doing their civic duty.
It’s a friendly, beautiful country whose culture frowns upon ostentatious wealth and self-promotion, and yet the desire for financial success apparently exists there as it does here.
Swedes know all about taxing the rich and expanding government control because they did that from 1970 to 1990.
“This was not the golden era of socialist nostalgia, but more like an Atlas Shrugged moment,” the Cato Institute’s Johan Norberg wrote a few years ago, referencing a well-known Ayn Rand novel championing objectivism. “Swedish companies like IKEA and Tetra Pak and lots of successful entrepreneurs left Sweden and not a single net job was created in the private sector.
“It was the one moment in Sweden’s modern history that we lagged behind other countries.”
This led to a financial crisis in the ‘90s, after which “politicians from both the left and right agreed to end this experiment. Instead, they reduced public spending, taxes, and regulation to get back to the growth model that made Sweden successful. Sweden started to outperform its neighbors again,” Norberg wrote.
Nations with only 11 million people apparently can be more nimble than the United States, changing course with much less upheaval.
Still, as Fairless wrote for the Wall Street Journal, the drop in public spending has resulted in fewer services for people on the low end of the income scale. Income taxes have dropped for three years straight. No longer are the rich being taxed at 90%, as they were in the ‘80s. As a result, public funds no longer go as far.
“Gang violence has surged in dozens of immigrant-heavy suburbs, creating areas where local criminal networks challenge state authority and hinder policing,” Fairless wrote. “A public debate is raging over for-profit schools, which critics say make money by skimping on playgrounds, libraries and staff.”
Those social problems and debates may be a natural outgrowth of any serious move toward fiscal responsibility. They are far less disruptive than what may happen in the United States if lawmakers and the White House can’t get control over government overspending.
Overall, Sweden’s new course, which generated more than 500 initial public offerings in the decade ending in 2024, holds the best lessons for politicians, whether in Utah or any other state, anxious to embrace a larger role for government.

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