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Let's spend whatever it takes to do the new prison right

6/19/2019

The last thing the state needs is to dedicate its new prison next year and immediately declare a prison crisis.

After hundreds of millions of dollars and acrimonious debates over whether the state needed to replace the Draper facility and where the new one should go, politicians would only add to public distrust and anger if they cut the ribbon and then scrambled for ways to find more beds to house a prison population that doesn’t fit what they built.

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Harvard's rejection of Parkland survivor shows how hard it is to survive teenage stupidity today

6/18/2019

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When I was a mere lad of 13, I went on a trip with my junior high jazz band to California. We spent a day at Disneyland. I remember being mildly irritated as I sat in the bus late that night, long after the park had closed, waiting for some of our band members to return so we could go to the hotel.

Turns out they had been arrested for shoplifting and were detained by park police until their parents could be notified and certain arrangements made.

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Airport security: Can we ever get it right?

6/12/2019

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After dropping my wife and one of our sons at the airport Wednesday for a trip to see relatives, watching from afar as they went through the familiar TSA dance, I was struck by the concept of faith.

At airports, people line up the way I remember my classmates lining up for vaccinations in elementary school back in the ‘60s, with grim-faced resignation and a vague hope that the pain the school nurse was inflicting somehow would be worth the collective good it would cause.

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Is Utah soft compared to hard-working states?

6/11/2019

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I confess, I’m eating lunch at my desk as I write this.

That makes me very American, but not so much a Utahn, apparently.

Wallethub came out with a ranking this week of the best states in which to live. Utah finished ninth, which is a good thing. But one of the reasons Utah scored so high is that it finished first as the state with the lowest hours worked per week.

That’s right. No matter how hard you think you’re working, people in other states are working harder.

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The internet and its snap judgments

6/5/2019

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The internet giveth, and the internet taketh away.

What it gives can, at times, be an instant sense of justice.

A few days ago, the world was shown a smartphone video of a manager at a Salt Lake fast food restaurant angrily telling a worker she had been fired. The son of the worker, an Hispanic woman with limited English skills, said he was trying to help his mother ask for a promised raise — one she was too shy to ask for herself.

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Would 'microtransit' get you out of your car and on a train?

6/4/2019

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Would you ride mass transit if someone out there offered you a cheap way to get from your neighborhood to the nearest station or bus stop? Is that what’s stopping you?

And if that someone was a tax-subsidized van you could summon with a smartphone app, would that be fair to the private companies that are trying to help you get there right now but that have to charge a higher price to stay in business?

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Let's spend whatever it takes to do the new prison right

Harvard's rejection of Parkland survivor shows how hard it is to survive teenage stupidity today

Airport security: Can we ever get it right?

Is Utah soft compared to hard-working states?

The internet and its snap judgments

Would 'microtransit' get you out of your car and on a train?

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