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Thoughts to nibble on during the long holiday weekend

11/26/2014

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Thanksgiving weekend is a good time to take it easy and digest recent news events. In that spirit, here are some thoughts to nibble on:

--President Obama caused a storm last week regarding immigration, but the most important thing his administration is doing on that front is secret, dangerous and no less controversial. The Wall Street Journal says U.S. marshals, who serve under the Justice Department, are donning Mexican Marine uniforms and helping in armed raids against drug dealers and other gangsters. Agents from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration also help in a supporting role.

Mexican officials deny it’s happening. They probably worry about a backlash in public opinion, considering Mexicans generally don’t want U.S. officials wielding guns in their country. The U.S. isn’t anxious to talk about it either, but a raid last July ended with a U.S. Marshals employee being wounded, making it difficult to keep the operation completely secret.


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The Thanksgiving proclamation I'd like to see

11/25/2014

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If history holds, President Obama will issue a proclamation this week. And, most likely, no one will care.

It will say all the right things for the holiday, as last year’s did when it asked Americans to “lift each other up and recognize, in the oldest spirit of this tradition, that we rise or fall as one Nation, under God.”

But it will be about as surprising as when he once 

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Like it or not, ride sharing services are likely here to stay

11/19/2014

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When I stepped from the baggage claim area at an airport in Tennessee recently, getting a ride to the hotel was as easy as opening a ride-share app and pressing a button.

I could view photos and ratings of available drivers. Within four minutes, the car I chose pulled up.

The driver was a retiree looking for a little extra money and a chance to get out of the house each day. His car was borrowed from his son, “because all I own are pickups,” but it was modern and

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Forget 'peak oil,' let's worry about 'peak chocolate'

11/18/2014

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For years, people have argued over “peak oil,” the point at which the planet’s reserves of that energy source will reach the maximum potential to provide for our demands. But now it’s time to forget all that. It’s peak chocolate we should be worried about.

You’re eating more than farmers can produce. The Washington Post says we haven’t seen such a string of consecutive chocolate deficits in a half century. How bad is it? Last year, the world ate about 70,000 metric tons more chocolate than was grown.


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Time to get tough on athletes and programs that misbehave

11/14/2014

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The New York Times has published an investigative piece about how a hit-and-run accident involving a star football player at Florida State University apparently was swept aside, with help from Tallahassee police. It was improperly investigated and charges were reduced to a pair of minor traffic citations, all without the media or the public ever knowing.

The saga, involving FSU cornerback P.J. Williams, is all too familiar. As my research for a column three years ago demonstrated, colleges and their 


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'Alex from Target' a bad twist on an old American story

11/12/2014

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It has been 53 years since FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow described television as a “vast wasteland.” His larger point was that TV ought to choose instead to focus on “education and culture,” as well as “decency and decorum.”

But if TV in 1961 was a wasteland, what is the Internet today?

A wasteland on steroids, perhaps? If anything, it has magnified some aspects of the American story that have been with us for a century or more, and not in a good way.

The case of #AlexfromTarget is exhibit A in this discussion. You may not have heard of this Internet phenomenon (my audience tends to skew a bit older than the teenage crowd). As the hashtag implies, Alex was an employee at Target — a 16-year-old part-timer who attended high school in Frisco, Texas. He was an unassuming, 


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Why did people not vote in Utah last week?

11/11/2014

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A colleague with a well-developed sense of civic duty came to me last Tuesday after voting in his precinct. Why, he wondered, had he even bothered?

Not a being a resident of Utah’s fourth congressional district, he faced a ballot with no real races. His choices consisted mainly of candidates with either no opposition or a token opponent who couldn’t be taken seriously. His only real choices involved three statewide constitutional issues.

Looking around the country, this sounds 


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Lotteries leave trail of broken promises

11/10/2014

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State lotteries are a ruse. If that’s a surprise to you, it’s because you haven’t been paying attention.

States almost always enter the lottery business by promising a lot of easy money for worthy things, such as public education. But once the politicians get hold of all that easy money, they start moving funds around, and education still ends up hurting.

Meanwhile, the poor and, ironically, uneducated, end up losing the most because they play the

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The big losers in Tuesday's election were families

11/5/2014

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Republicans scored huge victories nationwide on Tuesday. Families, however, took it on the chin.

Either voters are sending strange, mixed signals or, what is more likely, family values no longer are a perceived part of either party’s platform. We’ve come a long way from the days when it was a winning slogan for conservatives.

On Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts elected a Republican governor but, on the same ballot, 

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What if voting in the U.S. was required by law?

11/4/2014

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I had to wait about 15 minutes to cast my ballot Tuesday morning. I took that as a good sign, but in truth it was probably a false indicator.

As I write this, not one single ballot has been tabulated, but I can make a fairly safe prediction: Voter turnout in Utah will be dismal.

The website Wallethub.com confirmed recently what people here have been noticing for years. Polling locations in the Beehive State end up with a big surplus of unused “I voted” stickers at the end 

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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.

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