Jay Evensen - Opinions

Admission scandal isn't higher education's only problem

9/18/2019

Do you believe actress Felicity Huffman got off with a light sentence — two weeks in prison, a $30,000 fine and community service — for paying someone to rig SAT answers so her daughter could be admitted to the acting school of her choice?

Or maybe you believe the sentence fit the crime, or perhaps that prison is too harsh.

I’m not going to shed much light on these questions, other than to pose another one. If Huffman, or the 51 other people charged in the college admissions scandal uncovered by an FBI probe known as “operation varsity blues,” had instead donated richly, and legally, to the school of their choice, and their children had been given preference on that basis, would it have been much different?

Face it, we need to pay more for water

9/18/2019

Remember all that snow last winter? Remember how rainy it seemed to be in the spring, right on through June?

Well, that was before bone-dry August.

The Escalante River may be as good an illustration as any of how fickle the weather can be in the interior West. According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the river still stands at 124 percent of normal precipitation for the entire water year, but only 19 percent so far in September.

Use your credit cards, but take advice from the ancestors

9/11/2019

Sometimes, you can learn a lot about today by leafing through the yellowed pages of old newspapers (or the not-so-yellowed pages of newspapers.com’s electronic archives).

In April of 1937, economist Roger Babson wrote an opinion piece that warned about the misuse of credit. It may be good to buy something you can’t afford if that that thing is a machine that will pay for itself over time by saving money, he said.

Toll roads are coming; embrace them

9/10/2019

You don’t like the idea of toll roads in Utah. I mean, you really don’t like it, according to a newly released opinion poll commissioned by Utahpolicy.com.

The poll, conducted by Y2K Analytics, found a resounding 68 percent of Utahns either somewhat or strongly opposed to the idea.

Well, you’re going to get them anyway.

Maybe not now, and maybe not in the next couple of years, but eventually. That’s my prediction. Write it down.

Would you expose a political lie, even if it helped your campaign?

9/3/2019

If you’re a candidate for public office and you notice a social media campaign, coming from who knows where, that spreads falsehoods about your opponent, what do you do?

Do you take the John McCain high road? Remember how McCain, during the 2008 presidential election, confronted a supporter who said she couldn’t trust Barack Obama because “he’s an Arab”?

“No ma'am,” he said. “He’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues …”

Here's how schools can improve

8/28/2019

I’ve been thinking about Milton Friedman lately.

Next January will mark 18 years since I sat with the renowned economist in a hotel room in downtown Salt Lake City. By then, he was 89 years old (he would live to be 94), but his mind was remarkably clear. Utah was embroiled in hot debates over the future of choice in education, and he had plenty of strong opinions.

Tax the heck out of e-cigarettes, but do it carefully

8/27/2019

Sin taxes present governments with an interesting paradox. They discourage people from doing things that ruin their health and cause misery to the people around them.

At the same time, they make governments dependent on the money that comes from bad behavior.

Another way of saying this is that sin taxes often concern themselves with two types of addiction — that of people who drink, smoke or gamble, and that of governments who might end up relying on them for money.

Population bust: It's time people started talking about it

8/21/2019

Conventional wisdom tends to be a step behind changing trends, especially when it comes to things people have believed for centuries.

So chances are, if you’re in a dinner party and you bring up the subject of the world’s population, your fellow guests are likely to default to worries about too many people.

Who is in charge of education in Utah?

8/20/2019

If you have problems with vertigo, you probably shouldn’t involve yourself with trying to assess public school performance in Utah. It doesn’t take long for otherwise healthy people to get dizzy.

The latest report from the non-partisan, non-profit, just-the-facts Utah Foundation does an admirable job trying to make sense of any relationship between spending and outcomes in Utah’s public education.

That’s an age-old question. Trust me on this one. About 20 years ago, while serving as opinion editor, I decided to begin republishing one letter to the editor each week from the vast archives of the Deseret News. I found many from the early 20th century decrying the lack of funding for education and the need to pay teachers more.

The ironies of number neighbors on the Internet

8/14/2019

The text came in the middle of a busy day, while I was in mid-sentence of an editorial.

“Hey,” the person I don’t know said, “You’re my number neighbor.”

I glanced at the number atop the text. Sure enough, it was identical to mine except that the last digit was one number lower.

“It appears so,” I answered after a few moments of hesitation.

The return came swiftly. “What’s up?”

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