Jay Evensen - Opinions

The debt bomb just keeps ticking away

2/13/2019

Quick quiz: When was the following published in a major newspaper?
“While most have been worrying about the public debt and its unwieldy proportions, private debt too has been sneaking up on us … . The situation could make a readjustment in the case of a recession very difficult. It was the attempted liquidation through the market of a vast volume of private debt that brought on the 1929 debacle, at least in large part.”
You probably guessed it wasn’t written yesterday, or I wouldn’t have quoted it. But it could have been. Today’s problems have plenty of echoes from the past.

Did voters pass Prop 3 because they didn't see tax increase?

2/13/2019

You didn’t really think lawmakers would stop after messing with Proposition 3, did you?
Now it’s time to get at what some of them see as the real problem — the initiative process itself.
The thinking goes like this:
Last November, voters were faced with a ballot measure that asked, right up front, if they would raise the gas tax by 10 cents per gallon to help fund education. It failed miserably.

Why was Prop 3 changed? Voters contradicted themselves

2/11/2019

Simply put, the problem is this: Last November, Utah voters contradicted themselves.
On the one hand, they voted to pass Proposition 3, which expanded Medicaid coverage to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line, as called for under Obamacare.
On the other hand, they voted to put people in charge of the Legislature who, generally speaking, dislike Obamacare and view Medicaid expansion as fiscally irresponsible.
What did you expect would happen?

Down syndrome abortion bill sends a powerful message

2/11/2019

A bill wending its way through the Utah Legislature that would outlaw abortions performed solely because a mother doesn’t want to give birth to a child with Down syndrome may, as its detractors say, be difficult to enforce — but the message it would send is powerful.

If it becomes just a so-called “message bill,” consider that it says the people of Utah see children with Down syndrome as having the same sacred value as any other human life.

Resolution on border security ties committee in knots

2/5/2019

When do words strung together equal more than the sum of their parts?

The answer is the same as to the question of when you can get Utah lawmakers to vote against family values. It is when those words enter the twilight zone of partisan politics.

Members of the Utah Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee came face to face with a resolution late last week that was virtually dripping with political overtones, as well as traditional Utah family values — quite a load considering the words themselves seemed benign. Scrambling to save face, the committee’s Republican majority took the only safe course — it punted.

Utah's never-ending battle with voter initiatives

2/4/2019

To those who think the Utah Senate’s decision to approve a bill changing Proposition 3 on Monday was a slap in the face to voters, the bill’s sponsor has a message.

He wouldn’t have voted for any sort of expansion if Prop. 3 had failed. So in that sense, he said, he heard the people.

Should the people's power to make law be curtailed?

1/30/2019

Should future voter initiatives have to prove they can pay for themselves before people begin collecting signatures? Should they be written in such a way that any tax increases involved are featured prominently, not buried in the text?

These are just some of the questions floating around Utah’s Capitol Hill in response to voters passing a measure last November that makes full Medicaid expansion under Obamacare the law.

Who cuts your lawn, and would you like to pay more?

1/30/2019

Who cuts your grass?

When it comes to any kind of large-scale tax reform, messaging is vital. Utah’s legislative leaders might be able to persuade the public if they could sit down with each person for an hour and go through details and philosophy, but no one has time for that. Instead, it comes down to simple phrases.

And sometimes those miss the mark.

Would more Capitol parking be bad for the air?

1/28/2019

I started the 2019 legislative the way I usually do – by taking FrontRunner to the North Temple Station and grabbing bus No. 500 to the State Capitol.

And, just as in previous years, I sat mostly alone on that bus, with the exception of two or three well-dressed people and, notably, one lawmaker. Together, we took maybe three or four cars off the morning freeway rush, which probably didn’t do much to stem the mounting haze in the valley below.

Drones: If we can't shoot 'em, learn to control 'em

1/23/2019

Five years ago, some far-sighted, if perhaps a bit trigger-happy, people in Deer Trail, Colorado, population 700, had a bright idea. They put a referendum on the ballot that would have allowed people to buy hunting licenses to shoot drones from the sky.

What a simple, practical solution.

Of course, the plan came with a few potential problems. It may be irritating and, as we’ve recently seen, dangerous, to have unmanned mosquito-like machines buzzing overhead, but flying bullets aren’t exactly fun, either.

So it may have been a good thing the referendum failed, but I’ve thought a lot about those folks ever since.

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