Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

Why do Americans now embrace deficit spending?

3/30/2021

If history ought to provide anything, it is a sense of perspective.
Alexander Pope died a few decades before the American Revolution, but his observations on vice aptly describe modern Americans’ attitudes toward Washington overspending during the past three decades. “We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
Today’s unabashed embrace of overspending now encompasses both political parties.
President Trump originally campaigned on a promise to wipe out deficits in eight years. Instead, he pushed tax cuts and increased spending, and both deficits and the national debt ballooned. Republican complicity, along with year after year of low interest rates, seemed to signal a turning point.

Americans can learn from mass shootings, as I did from a murder 37 years ago

3/23/2021

Thirty-seven years have passed since murder was a part of my daily life, and since Carol Spencer, a grieving mother with muscular dystrophy, taught me a lesson about it.
Back then, I was a cub reporter at the Review-Journal in Las Vegas. New guys were given the police beat, but not during the cushy daytime hours when police chiefs and spokespeople waxed philosophical about crimes. I worked the night shift, when all the action took place and the only people available to talk were grieving or in shock.
I didn’t worry much about mass shootings in 1984 because they rarely happened. I didn’t worry about a pandemic because the world hadn’t seen one of those since the end of World War I.

Remember Simpson-Bowles? You ought to

3/22/2021

I was cleaning my office the other day when I came across a rare piece of history. It was a page proof — a printout of an editorial page generally used for editing — dated Nov. 13, 2010, and it featured an editorial I wrote in support of the Simplson-Bowles plan to reduce the nation’s debt.
It was signed by former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, the Simpson part of that team. He had visited the newspaper and wanted to show his support for the piece.
The timing of this find was instructive. In recent days, the Biden administration has begun touting its plans for various tax increases, presumably to begin offsetting the enormous costs of multiple COVID-19 stimulus packages, the latest of which is projected to cost $1.9 trillion.
Earlier this month, on ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen talked about taxing corporations and the wealthy more, and she wouldn’t rule out a wealth tax on assets above $50 million.

Welcome back to the gas price roller coaster

3/17/2021

Here we go again.
The gas-price rollercoaster is heading up the steep incline once more, only not too slowly this time. Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.
Prices in my neighborhood already have exceeded $3 a gallon for regular unleaded. A New York Times report says we may expect $4 by summer.
Is it Joe Biden’s fault?

Speed limits have nothing to do with pandemic reckless driving

3/15/2021

Col. Michael Rapich of the Utah Highway Patrol wants to make one thing clear. The alarming increase in fatal accidents and reckless driving on Utah roadways since the pandemic began is not connected with the increase in speed limits.
It’s been more than six years since the posted limit along Wasatch Front freeways became 70 mph. You have to go back even farther to when the rural limit hit 80.
Back in ‘14, I wrote a rather sarcastic column about getting on I-15, with its new posted limit, and trying to see if I could hit 70. I could not. Traffic was too bad. Except for a guy in a Beemer who was darting in and out of lanes as if he were searching for a clearing that would lead him to the checkered flag, everyone was plodding along.

Unfortunately, the time change isn't going away soon

3/11/2021

Here’s an idea: Instead of forcing everyone to lose an hour of sleep by changing the time at 2 a.m. on Sunday, make the change happen at 4 p.m. on Friday.
Then, presto! It’s suddenly 5 p.m. and time to start the weekend.
If we’re going to keep this twice-yearly fiasco going, let’s at least make it a little fun. As it is, the internet age won’t even let us use the excuse that we forgot to set the clock back. We wander blurry eyed to work on Monday and spend two or three days in a funk.
It’s almost as agonizing as watching legislative gears to churn through something that ought to be a no-brainer.

Does everyone really need a stimulus check?

3/10/2021

In a few days, 90% of you will receive a check worth at least $1,400 from the government, with twice that going to couples and even more to people with dependent children.
The question is, do you need it?
Oh sure, if you’re laid off or furloughed and behind in rent and other bills, the answer is an emphatic “yes.” But that’s not the criteria for getting a check. All you need is a pulse and an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less, if you file taxes as an individual, or $150,000 or less if you file as a couple.

As the pandemic ends, will we learn important lessons?

3/8/2021

A year ago this week, after meeting with worried officials from Salt Lake International Airport, I tried to convey the mood of the day:
“As you see color coded maps on television showing which states have declared emergencies and which have experienced deaths; as you watch the stock market snap like a bungee cord; as you see basketball games without fans and hear of church services, conventions and trade shows canceled, you may feel like peasants hunkering down in the face of an advancing hostile army,” I wrote in a column.

Texas doesn't get to decide when the pandemic is over

3/3/2021

When do we cross the finish line? Whose job is it to throw a symbolic mask in the air and declare the world back to normal, or as close to that as we can ever be again?
The answer, sadly, may be another question: Why should we expect the end to be any less combative than any other part of the last 12 months?
The intersection of politics and science isn’t easily governed by stop signs or traffic lights. Loud collisions have been common during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pandemic certainty remains elusive, no matter what people say

3/1/2021

If you write a political column for a living, it often doesn’t pay to tell strangers about it. But when someone I hired recently to do some work at my home asked, I couldn’t think of a way to be vague or evasive.
What followed was an unsolicited lecture, of sorts, on what I should be writing about COVID-19 restrictions and the Biden administration. (Strangers these days rarely want to talk about local school boards or city councils, for some reason.) The administration wants to impose travel restrictions on Florida to stem a fast-moving new strain, he said. But Florida has had a low death rate because, unlike liberal states, it has stayed mostly open, while California, on the other hand, has closed down and suffered a lot of deaths.
Well …

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