Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

Pandemics are fraught with political peril

2/27/2020

Right now, the sun is shining, metaphorically, in Utah. Unemployment is hovering around 2%. It’s even lower in some cities. Lawmakers are looking at surpluses.
Even a stiff downturn on Wall Street this week didn’t faze Utah Senate leaders much. They told reporters they always try to budget with an eye toward the possibility that bad times will come, but they’re still exploring ways they might cut taxes this year.
All this could end quickly.

Should you be fined for an outburst at a public meeting?

2/25/2020

Sen. Don Ipson says his bill isn’t necessarily aimed at protesters who incessantly try to disrupt meetings of the Utah Inland Port Authority Board.
That’s ok. As long as it applies to those meetings, it will do.
With a couple of tweaks, that is.

Will a rewrite of Prop. 4 include the sausage?

2/24/2020

On any of the 45 days the Utah Legislature is in session, you can sit in the gallery of either the House or Senate in Utah’s Capitol and, as some observers put it, watch the sausage being made.
Actually, the real sausage-making, the part that wouldn’t endear you to sausage-eating (to wear out the metaphor), happens in closed caucuses or other rooms away from the spotlight, but the final product gets molded and formed into shape in full view.

How many jerks can you count in this airplane story?

2/19/2020

So, who was the jerk?
Was it the woman on the American Airlines flight late last month, later identified as Wendi Williams, a school teacher, who reclined her seat into the lap of a man whose own seat, because he was on the last row, could not recline?
Or was it the bearded man with glasses, earbuds and angry eyes who sat behind her, incessantly shoving her seat with his right hand the way a 7-year-old child might try annoying a sibling?

Lawmakers open can of worms on bigamy law

2/18/2020

There are cans of worms. There are buckets of snakes. And then, there are bigamy laws in Utah.
No one can accuse Utah lawmakers of being afraid to open any of these. Three years ago, they lowered the legal blood-alcohol limit for drunk driving to .05, the lowest in the nation. That generated a lot of headlines, and even threats of tourism boycotts because, well, it was different. (Not different from other nations, just other states.)
Now the Legislature is generating headlines because it’s working toward making the state’s bigamy laws more like those in most other states.

Time to end straight-ticket voting in Utah

2/12/2020

Former House Speaker Tim O’Neill’s most quoted political wisdom no longer is true.
O’Neill, the Boston Democrat who ruled the House while Ronald Reagan was president, said, “All politics is local.” At its root, this referred to how members of Congress needed the skills to take care of the wishes of their local districts if they wanted to hang onto a seat.
That’s no longer true. Today, all politics is national. Voters increasingly care most about whether a candidate supports the current president, or whether he or she adheres to strict party principles.
Local issues? Who cares?

Why doesn't Utah have a homeless czar?

2/11/2020

Pop quiz: Who is in charge of Utah’s efforts to help the homeless?
If you’re drawing a blank, you’ve got the right answer.
Scott Howell, the former Democratic leader of the Utah Senate and current board member of the Pioneer Park Coalition, asked that question at a Deseret News/KSL editorial board meeting Tuesday.
Then he answered it. “There’s nobody.”

Let Washington set our clocks

2/10/2020

Here’s a notion that may seem radical in these parts: States’ rights have a limit. Some things are best imposed from Washington.
Before you throw stones, think about it for a minute. We wouldn’t want each state to coin its own money or launch its own independent army. We learned 90 years ago that it’s better to let the FBI chase bank robbers across state lines than for states to chase them up to the line but no farther. And although it was controversial when construction started in the 1950s, we wouldn’t have much of an interstate highway system today if we had relied on states alone to plan it out.

What will be Romney's political cost?

2/5/2020

On Wednesday, Mitt Romney gave America something it doesn’t often see: A politician who won’t follow the partisan script even when it is in his political interests to do so.
A lot of people say they want to see Washington politicians vote for principle over party, but generally they mean that for people of a different party than their own. When it happens to someone from their party, they tend to question the principle.

Why do Utah's political parties want your private information?

2/4/2020

Time was, not too long ago, just about everything you did was public, and no one seemed to care.
When news reporters interviewed people on the street, they routinely asked for their names and addresses, both of which were then broadcast. Coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy provides a perfect example, only because recordings of it are so plentiful on the internet. Eyewitnesses to that tragic event gave their addresses over the air as if they were telling the temperature or time of day, apparently never pausing to think about what cranks, psychopaths or hucksters might do.
Fifty-seven years later, we no longer have phone books, and people are much more cautious about giving up information.

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