Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

Tick, tock; where is Utah's tax reform bill?

2/26/2019

State Rep. Susan Duckworth went through her annual windmill-tilting exercise Wednesday, trying to get fellow lawmakers to support her bill to make all feminine hygiene products, diapers and similar items exempt from sales taxes in Utah.

The Democrat from Magna has carried this bill unsuccessfully for four years now. On Wednesday, the House Revenue and Taxation Committee listened politely, then voted to hold the bill, effectively killing it once more. This time, however, the reason given was that everyone is waiting on a huge tax-overhaul bill to emerge from somewhere deep within the marbled walls of the State Capitol.

About that, two things may be observed.

Don't freak about recent earthquakes; well maybe a little

2/26/2019

Could Utah’s recent little earthquakes trigger a volcano in Yellowstone? Has anyone checked on the dormant volcanoes around our state to see whether they’re getting ready to spew lava? Is my house about to be swallowed? Aaargh!
First, calm down. The answers to the first two, actually posed by worried callers to people at University of Utah seismograph stations, is no.

Utah's hate crimes bill is needed

2/26/2019

In the words of modern day poet Anthony Liccione, “They say, timing is everything. But then they say, there is never a perfect time for anything.”

Certainly, there never is any time at all for what Carlo Alazo, a 22-year-old from Tampa, Florida, is accused of doing.

Sandy's water troubles highlight challenges of 21st century

2/19/2019

Of all the things Americans take for granted, water is near the top.

Getting information should should be somewhere near the top, too. After all, this is the Information Age, right?

But back to water for a second: We turn the tap and expect an endless supply of life-giving, clean wetness to come out, either hot or cold, depending on how we want it. We shower in it, drink it, brush our teeth with it, cook with it and wash dishes in it. As much as 60 percent of our bodies are made up of the stuff.

America during WWII's first year has much to teach us

2/18/2019

Dark times seems to bring out the worst in Americans. Despite all the outward displays of unity after 9/11, there were calls to round up people of Middle Eastern descent. Members of the Sikh religion, whose men grow long beards and wear turbines but have nothing remotely to do with
the radical fundamentalists who attacked the United States, found themselves the subject of frequent violence. This remains true today.
In that sense, little has changed since the days immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec.

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.

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