Jay Evensen - Opinions

A bike costs what? How inflation is taking its toll

6/11/2021

I had the brilliant idea of getting my wife a bicycle for her birthday. Nothing fancy, mind you, just a comfortable touring bike. I had visions of us leisurely cycling to a nearby lake on a warm summer day, with sandwiches neatly stored in a picnic basket and Vivaldi’s Summer, from the Four Seasons, playing mysteriously, yet relaxingly, in the background.
Until I walked into a neighborhood bicycle shop, that is, and came face-to-face with the reality of 2021’s semi-post covid economy (semi, because the pandemic really isn’t over, yet).

Western states must outlaw fireworks this summer

6/8/2021

In a normal rain year, allowing people to set off fireworks in the middle of a Utah summer is, to put it charitably, asking for trouble.
If I were to put it in less charitable terms, I could quote former Utah Gov. Gary Herbert. Nine years ago, as the state struggled against several human-caused fires in the middle of another dry summer, he said, “We can meet together and pass law after law after law. But you can't pass a law that outlaws stupid."

As drought worsens, let's not be stupid

6/2/2021

The summer of thirst has begun.
Maybe you won’t find yourself short of drinking water — we can hope so, anyway — but everything around you won’t be so lucky. Your lawn, your dirty car and the little things you like to keep nice and shiny will start blending into the brown, dusty landscape of the raw and parched desert in which we live.
“We are a special kind of stupid,” was how California congressman Tom McClintock described Westerners, and perhaps the federal government, at a recent webinar of the Republican members of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Inflation, uncertainty the backdrop to Biden's big spending plans

5/27/2021

Two things ought to be looming large over discussions in Washington about President Biden’s American Jobs plan: Inflation and uncertainty.
Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”
Right now, money seems to be a lot more plentiful than output.

Utah is no longer last in per pupil spending. So what?

5/27/2021

Put on your fancy clothes. Grab your top hat. It’s time to party. Maybe this should be declared a state holiday.
For the first time in at least two decades, Utah no longer ranks dead last in per pupil spending for public education. The new last-place loser? Idaho.
Sure, it’s a difference of only a few bucks per student (Utah spend $8,014, and Idaho $7,985), and yes, ranking 50th instead of 51st is kind of like the Houston Rockets vaulting into only the second worst record in the NBA, except that Utah schools don’t get to participate in a draft lottery for the best teachers.

Utah lawmakers spent the week chasing bogeymen

5/21/2021

Utah doesn’t name its legislative sessions the way the World Meteorological Organization names hurricanes. If it did, Wednesday would be accurately named the Bogeyman session.
Hurricanes cause real damage. This one? Well, if hurricanes were just resolutions, it would mean the weather was only thinking about knocking your house down. Scary, but not really. They do kick up wind, though.

Are we up for an honor system for mask-wearing?

5/17/2021

The Centers for Disease Control wants to put Americans on the honor system.
Are we honorable enough for that?
If you have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, you “can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distrancing,” according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. That is, unless local laws or business policies tell you otherwise.

What I learned about peace from a Palestinian taxi driver

5/13/2021

Years ago, while on assignment in Jerusalem for the Deseret News, I encountered a Palestinian cab driver who changed my life.
I had flagged him down to take me from a Palestinian section of the city back to my hotel. He was a talkative sort, gregarious and friendly. I noticed he had Arabic writing across his dashboard, on the sun visor and elsewhere in the car. I asked him what it all meant. He said these were religious phrases that meant a lot to him.

So ... how will the pandemic end?

5/12/2021

How will the pandemic end?
Will politicians hold a press conference, declaring victory over whatever divided us politically about the virus? Will there be a national day of celebration, to be enshrined as a holiday forever more, with parades and fireworks? Will the president fly onto an aircraft carrier beneath a banner that says “mission accomplished?”

When water is scarce, it ought to cost more

5/12/2021

When a severe drought held the West coast in its clutches in 2015, a lot of governments could think of no better way to get people to conserve water than to encourage them to turn on each other through drought shaming — the practice of publicly outing and humiliating perceived water wasters on social media.
The results should have been predictable.

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