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Anyone who heard fairy tales as a child knows what not to do when you receive strange seeds in the mail.
Maybe you didn’t trade the family cow for them. Maybe you didn’t even ask for them. But if you plant them, bad things will happen. And for heaven’s sake, don’t climb the beanstalk.
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Whatever you might think of Sen. Mitt Romney and his Trust Act, it would be hard to make a logical case for it being a way to dismantle or destroy Social Security and Medicare.
Yet, to listen to some Democrats, that’s exactly what it is. House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Richard Neal issued a statement saying, “the intention of the bill” is for “far-reaching cuts to Social Security and Medicare” and to “fast-track the destruction of these programs.” If nothing else, this illustrates how hard it may be to fix a looming crisis for these two entitlements before an existential crisis forces the issue in a few years. If you could live anywhere while still working for your current employer, where would you go?
This is becoming a front-of-mind question for many people, including my son, who works for one of the world’s largest internet companies in the Bay Area. He’s been working from home for months now, with no end in sight. If this continues, could he move back to the Wasatch Front, retain the same salary and, instead of paying rent for an apartment in one of the nation’s most expensive markets, buy a house? If you work for a company along the Wasatch Front and have a yearning to live in a rural setting somewhere, could you live out your dream without having to scrounge for ways to make money in a traditionally bleak rural economy? The host of a radio show asked me last week why mask-wearing has become intertwined with politics.
I had no good answer. I’m not sure anyone does. It’s an election year. Hyper-partisan Americans are, for the most part, stuck at home. The news is focused laser-like on two things — the pandemic and protests against racial injustice. Maybe this is a case of simply having to use the political resources you’ve been given. Maybe, as I’ve heard it suggested, the way to keep people from rioting in Japan is to stand on a box and say, “Please stop rioting.”
I don’t know if that is true, but I’ve heard it said about Sweden, as well. And yet, it would be hard to find two countries with similar reputations for niceness who approached the coronavirus pandemic the same way but have had such different results. Utah could be yet another case study. The Deseret News has launched an effort to get people to wear masks and practice social distancing, among other things, for a 55-day period to bring down the state’s infection rate and curb the current surge. Pollsters say there is a big difference between telling someone on the phone that you would support violence in the streets as a reaction to this November’s election and actually picking up a brick or some other weapon and using it.
Well, thank goodness for that, but it hardly makes me sleep better at night. On Monday, Spencer Cox was declared the winner of the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary, having won 36.4% of the vote in a four-way race.
And while no one should doubt the legitimacy of that victory, a natural question to ask is whether a little more than one-third of the vote ought to be enough. Does Cox now have any sort of a Republican mandate going into his general election contest with Democrat Chris Peterson? That question is even more applicable in Utah’s first congressional district, where Blake Moore was declared the winner of the Republican primary with, as of Monday, just 30.92% of the vote, also in a four-person race. It’s a rare day when this column veers into the sports world. But then, it’s a rare day when baseball cancels its entire minor league season.
The last time that happened was never — not during the influenza pandemic 100 years ago and not during either of two world wars. No one could have foreseen this, of course, least of all the late former Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini, who risked much of her political capital three decades ago building what now is called Smith’s Ballpark, and who lured a triple-A team to the city, now known as the Bees. |
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The author
Jay Evensen is the Opinion Editor of the Deseret News. He has more than 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. Archives
June 2025
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