Jay Evensen
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Education is local when it's at your kitchen table

3/26/2014

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By 2014, school children in America were to have reached 100 percent proficiency in math and science, according to the goals of the No Child Left Behind law.

So … how’s that working out for us?

As a nation, we’re so far from that goal of perfection that it’s getting in the way of seeing the progress we’ve made.

Yes, it’s true that only 42 percent of fourth graders and 35 percent of eight graders were measured as proficient in math in 2013, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress study known as The Nation’s Report Card.

And yes, only 35 percent of fourth graders and 36 percent of eighth graders were proficient or better at reading.

But compare this to the math scores in 1990, when only




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Cigarette taxes lead to smuggling, but also to less smoking

3/25/2014

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With some issues, you’ve got to cut through the smoke to see what’s really important.

Which brings me, naturally, to cigarettes.

It may surprise you to know that a good chunk of the few people you see lighting up in Utah (smoking rates here — 10.6 percent in 2012 — are the lowest in the nation), got their cigarettes from across the state’s borders.


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Why doesn't Snowden start snooping on the Russians?

3/19/2014

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So now Ed Snowden says the National Security Agency can record absolutely every phone call made in a foreign country and play them back as needed.

Snowden, it seems, is full of endless tidbits about how the United States gathers information. But his periodic revelations are growing tiresome for a reason that ought to be obvious.

He lives in exile in Russia, a nation whose leader makes no secret of controlling how the media reports things, who forces


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Rehabilitation beats new prison construction

3/18/2014

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What in the name of the Birdman of Alcatraz is going on here? I thought prison was where society sent troubled young people so they could be taught how to become better criminals. And if they got caught three times, they would be called out on a third strike and sent up the river for the rest of their lives.

At least, that’s how it has worked in much of the country since the 1990s, when getting tough on crime was the one thing politicians could agree on, their only disagreement


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George Will and the lovable losers on Chicago's north side

3/14/2014

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A book review:
“A Nice Little Place on the North Side” by George Will, Crown Publishing.

When conservative pundit George Will writes a book about baseball, you can be sure it won’t be a sentimental, romanticized or emotional look the game, which far too often lends itself to such analysis by those who wax rhapsodic about the game’s place in the fabric of American culture.


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Let's blame Nixon for Obama's comedy show appearance

3/12/2014

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We probably have Richard Nixon to blame for this.

When he was running for president in 1968, Nixon decided, against the advice of just about everyone around him, that he needed to improve his image with the hip crowd by making a cameo appearance on the new edgy comedy show “Laugh-in.”

Nixon was on for just four seconds. All he did was repeat one of the show’s most popular catch phrases. But his “Sock it to me?” sounded absurdly out of place for a former vice president who once had engaged in a heated


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Lockhart's 'iPad in every backpack' plan lacked vision

3/11/2014

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As political slogans go, “A chicken in every pot” was more effective than “An iPad in every backpack.”

For awhile, that is.

When Herbert Hoover used that slogan, it helped vault him to the White House in 1928. But when the Great Depression hit, it didn’t prove any more popular than Utah House Speaker Becky Lockhart’s recent iPad plan, which proved as elusive as the top level of Angry Birds.


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Does anybody really know what time it is?

3/10/2014

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If we’re going to continue this daylight saving time nonsense, let’s at least be humane about it. Make it take effect at 4 p.m. on a Monday.

Presto! A weary Monday afternoon turns into time to go home. Sorry boss, the day just got away from me.

Why does it have to come out of my sleep at 2 a.m. on a Sunday?

But, no. Instead, all we get are half-hearted measures every year in state legislatures wanting to make an exception of this or that state. In Utah, Rep. Ronda Menlove, R-Garland, has a bill (HB197), that would require the Governor’s Office of Economic Development to hold a meeting on the subject.

A meeting? Talk about an hour of your life you’ll never get back, even in November.


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If you're broke, come to Utah's high-wage capital

3/7/2014

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Remember all the talk about how wages in the Salt Lake City area were so low compared to elsewhere? I heard this almost from the moment I moved here in 1986.

Those figures always have depended on how you measure them, and the worries always were a bit overblown. Utahns tend to rank low in per capita income because families here have more children on average than families in other states. Even so, it ranks far from the bottom.


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Don't mess up the one tax Utah gets right

3/5/2014

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If Utah has gotten one aspect of taxing and public accountability right, it is with property taxes.

Unfortunately, a bill wending its way through the state Legislature would mess with that success, raise your property taxes and funding the House Speaker’s unproven notion that what Utah schools really need is a tablet in every backpack.

First, let me back up. Some of you may be scratching your heads at the notion that Utah handles property taxes right. I understand the concern. No tax plays with the emotions of people quite like the one that puts teeth in government’s notion of how much your house is worth. People don’t like the idea of a tax sale, no matter


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    The author

    Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities.

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