Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

'Turkey lady' taught the world how to forgive

3/27/2019

Victoria Ruvolo’s professional website announced her death Wednesday with a simple admonition. “Forgive someone today.”

That is a fitting epitaph for one of the greatest people I have met — someone who didn’t just decide to turn metaphorical lemons into lemonade, but who used that lemonade to refresh the world.

Actually, she would be perturbed at me for calling her Victoria. That was what her mother called her when she was angry, she told me once after I had used the name in a column. To her friends, she was Vickie.

Supreme court gerrymander case could affect Utah

3/26/2019

Democrats in the Utah Senate may be the last to know, but when I asked them during an editorial board visit this week whether any legislative attempts are underway to change Utah’s anti-gerrymandering initiative, they said no; at least not that they had heard.

That, of course, is not expected to be the case forever. It’s just that Utah’s Republican lawmakers have until 2021 to make changes to what voters approved. That is the year when 2020 Census figures are available and the state will need to readjust its political boundaries.

In case you didn’t notice, lawmakers had their hands full changing the other two successful initiatives during this year’s session. Given how readily they did that, it’s hard to believe they would leave this one alone.

How one man's death brought out the worst in people

3/20/2019

In the age of irony, Jeremiah Disney’s death presented itself like a grapefruit tossed to a home run hitter.

But those taking swings at it have been — again, ironically — saying more about themselves than about the tragic and short life of an apparently misguided young man.

According to various news reports from Marion, Indiana, a small town in the north central part of the state, a man noticed someone had been rummaging through his cluttered garage one day about a week ago. He decided the next day to clean things up and see what was missing.

Should Utah's Legislature spend longer in session?

3/19/2019

Here’s a trivia question: How many bills did the Utah Legislature pass in the 45-day annual session that ended last week?

If you said 574, you’re an astute observer.

Now, can you think of 574 things the state had a burning need to put in its code books? Can you think of 100?

The sales tax monster that just won't die

3/15/2019

If state lawmakers need easy money, you can be sure the conversation will come around to putting the full state sales tax rate back on food purchases.

No one seems to have invented a wooden stake effective enough to put a final end to that monster. No one seems to have an antidote to whatever potion some lawmakers took years ago that makes them see this tax as the shiny answer to their problems.

Daylight savings' hour may finally have come

3/13/2019

Politics is not without ironies. A resolution to urge Congress to let states keep daylight saving time year-round nearly ran out of time on the final day for committee hearings at the Utah Legislature.

By the time the sponsor, Rep. Marsha Judkins, R-Provo, began her presentation, only seven minutes remained in the meeting.

Can lawmakers keep Utahns from freaking over reform?

3/11/2019

An astute observer at the State Capitol put it to me this way: Human beings differ from other animals in that they can lengthen the time between stimulus and response through reason and thought.
Provoke an animal and it probably will lash out immediately in self defense. Provoke a human and he or she might take awhile to assess the situation before deciding how to respond.

But that time begins to shorten significantly when people begin to feel confused, overwhelmed or under attack.

Must we relearn the lessons of immunization the hard way?

3/6/2019

A few years ago, after meeting with a deputy executive director of UNICEF, I couldn’t help noticing the irony.

He was excited about how the widespread availability of vaccines was providing hope to parents in the Third World. Meanwhile, many privileged, educated Americans were refusing to vaccinate their children — voluntarily accepting the risk of returning the mayhem impoverished countries are so anxious to escape.

Who are the losers in Utah's proposed tax reform bill?

3/6/2019

To Jim Ferrin, tax reform is more than just an abstract concept. If Utah lawmakers succeed in making a law out of the roughly 260-page bill that became public last Wednesday and zipped through a House committee on Thursday, he may have a decision to make.

Try to deal with the cost and hassle of collecting sales taxes from his many clients spread throughout Utah, move somewhere else or find a different line of work.

Utah lawmakers are on the verge of enacting sweeping tax reform with less than two weeks to go in their annual 45-day session, which ends March 14. The bill, HB441, contains 8,030 lines of type. It is by no means the only thing to be considered during the final days. How many lawmakers have read it?

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