Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

Will this private train line work in Florida? What about Utah?

9/25/2023

A California-based company that is looking to build a privately funded passenger rail line connecting Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Los Angeles is paying close attention to a different private line that began service Friday between Miami and Orlando.
That’s especially true because the Florida company plans to turn its attention next to a Los Angeles-Las Vegas line that could compete with at least part of its plans.
Americans have to go back generations to find the last time train companies competed with each other over major inter-city routes. But a lot of people associated with trains believe times are changing, and competition can only mean good things for passengers.
An official close to Dreamstar Line, Inc. of Newport Beach, Calif. — the one hoping to bring trains to Utah — told me the Florida operation, if successful, could confirm their own financial calculations for proposed routes.

A government shutdown won't solve nation's problems

9/25/2023

Eleven years ago, I likened the nation’s profligate overspending to a spot along the Niagara River, usually marked by the whitewater rapids alongside Goat Island. It’s known as the point of no return. Venture past there and, in about three minutes, you will fly over the spectacular Niagara Falls and onto the rocks below.
It won’t be a happy ending to your day.
Once you pass this point, agency is gone. Choices disappear. Engaging in a power struggle over who steers the ship would be ludicrous.

What about those space aliens in Mexico?

9/20/2023

As The Atlantic put it earlier this year, “Talking about UFOs can be a nasty business.”
It seems to have gotten even nastier in an age where so many people question government and scientists.
And it doesn’t help when a UFO enthusiast in Mexico appears before the Mexican Congress with two tiny mummified bodies from Peru that he claims are space aliens and the most important discoveries in the history of humankind.

Mitt Romney could have trouble passing the torch

9/14/2023

Perhaps the most memorable thing Sen. Mitt Romney left us with this week was the image of his colleagues in the Senate as performance artists.
And at precisely the time when we need real leaders.
In a candid excerpt of an upcoming biography by The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, Romney recounts being told by a Senate colleague, “There are about 20 senators here who do all the work, and there are about 80 who go along for the ride.”

Impeachment? How about fixing federal overspending?

9/13/2023

In my opinion, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley clearly won the first Republican primary debate when she spoke political truth to ideologues, of which the nation has an abundant supply these days.
You can’t get a federal ban on abortions, she said, when you don’t have the votes in the Senate.
In other words, if you care deeply about an issue but don’t have the votes to enact your own ideas, you need a plan B.
And those seem to be in short supply these days.

Private company wants to start SLC to Vegas train line

9/8/2023

While Utah’s transportation officials continue to hope for a federal grant later this month to begin studying the idea of train service from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, one private company is hoping to beat them to the punch.
Dreamstar Lines Inc., headquartered in Newport Beach, California, is already well down the track toward setting up regular overnight rail service between Los Angeles and San Francisco. An official said the company hopes to have an entirely privately funded service in operation by early 2025.
But before that’s done, the company already has started seriously studying regular service between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, with a major stop in Las Vegas. This line could be ready a few years after the California line begins.

Should we put age limits on politicians?

9/5/2023

In December of 1919, some members of the Senate were starting to suspect that the president, Woodrow Wilson, was incapacitated. In truth, he was, having suffered a massive stroke in October that his wife and others close to him were covering up.
But now, an American consular agent had been kidnapped in Mexico. The secretary of state had sent a strongly worded letter to Mexico that didn’t sound like something Wilson would have approved. To quiet the worries and rumors, the president’s personal secretary agreed to the Senate’s demands that two of its members have a meeting with Wilson to hear his opinions on the matter.

No Labels may pick a third-party presidential candidate

9/1/2023

I have a theory: If I were to go down Main Street in Salt Lake City and randomly ask people if they have heard of the No Labels movement, I would be lucky to get 1 in 10 who say yes.
The same would apply to any major city, with the possible exception of Washington.
I mention that exception because, now that the movement has started to talk about the real possibility of running a third-party candidate for president next year, the Washington establishment has begun to react as if an enemy is about to invade.
People close to President Biden have warned that a No Labels ticket (or a Bernie Sanders or Cornel West bid) would siphon votes away from Biden and lead to victory by Donald Trump.
In Arizona, the Democratic Party sued to keep No Labels off the ballot in ‘24, claiming deficiencies in the paperwork.
Earlier this month, a judge rejected that claim.

Nobel Peace laureate Yunus may face prison sentence

9/1/2023

Nobel Peace Prize laureates don’t come through the door every day at the Deseret News. But even though Muhammad Yunus hadn’t been presented that honor yet when I first met him in 1997 (he received it in 2006), it was a meeting I won’t forget.
Yunus, an unassuming Bangladeshi man and a friend to Utah, had just come from cataract surgery at Alta View Hospital, courtesy of Utah surgeon Dr. Scott Leckman. As we sat and talked, he kept marveling at how his sight was gradually returning to him, clearer and more vibrant than ever.
I wrote at the time that this was a metaphor, of sorts, for the way Yunus had removed the fog of despair from the eyes of many people who once lived amid mud and squalor.
His “microcredit” program involved giving small loans, $20 or so, to people who in turn would buy a goat or supplies to help themselves earn money on their own. These were the people regular banks ignored, but that Yunus’ Grameen Bank thrived from, even as the incremental loans lifted many out of poverty.

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