Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

Great ideas politicians might not have courage to do

11/29/2017

Maybe, like me, you picked up the phone sometime before the most recent election and heard a robot asking you questions about high-density housing. The ones I got asked me to press buttons to indicate whether I thought my city had enough of it, needed more, or would do better with less.

These were not frivolous questions during a municipal campaign season in a rapidly growing metropolitan area. Political careers hung in the balance.

Why this Utah lawmaker wants to study death penalty

11/28/2017

Politics has only a few “third rails” —topics you don’t want to touch without, like touching the electrified third rail powering a subway train, getting shocked out of your political career.

In a conservative, interior state like Utah, one of those may be the death penalty.

Check that: Utah may be THE state where capital punishment can’t be discussed in polite

A Thanksgiving proclamation I'd like to see

11/22/2017

Here are three quick observations on leftover news items for you to pick at as you pick at that bird:

Turkey day opportunity: Probably the last thing you’ll do this prolonged weekend is read President Trump’s Thanksgiving proclamation. That’s a shame, seriously.

It may be among the best things to come out of this White House. Much longer than a tweet, it talks about the things for which we all should give thanks, and it ends by encouraging “all Americans

Refugee's tale is the quintessential American story

11/21/2017

If you have surgery at St. Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, you won’t notice the person standing near the surgeon, handing him or her the instruments needed to perform the work, retracting an incision, suctioning blood and, perhaps, closing the wound.

That’s the nature of surgery, which often requires the patient to be unconscious.
And so, you won’t learn anything about that person’s background, which is a shame. He might be Eumbo Kasongo.

On Thanksgiving, be glad life in U.S. is getting better

11/15/2017

Imagine you are a newcomer to the United States, with no knowledge of the culture. How, over the next week, would you learn to describe Thanksgiving through your observations?

Is it the beginning of the holiday season? Does it usher in a month of frenzied shopping with discounts at retailers? Is it a time when families get together and eat a lot?

If you discover it is a day when people express gratitude for blessings, how would that fit with

Why are Americans so reluctant to change alcohol culture?

11/14/2017

In this corner — the combined wisdom of The World Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association, the European Commission, the European Transport Safety Council, the World Health Organization, the Canadian Medical Association, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, not to mention the Utah state Legislature and the National Transportation Safety Board. All of these

Why tweets from the losing candidate matter

11/8/2017

Kathie Allen should have reacted better.

She could have worded her tweet after her loss in the state’s Third congressional district in ways that conveyed her disappointment, while still sounding gracious.

Instead, she tweeted, “(John) Curtis is Mormon and Republican. I am neither. That really seems to be the only thing Utah County cares about, just as I was warned."

Ok, then.

Losing an election can be an intensely emotional experience. Allen quickly deleted her tweet and later apologized. That was the right thing to do. Clearly, she had reacted in the passion of the moment, which on one level is quite excusable.

Yet at the same time, she has inadvertently reminded us that times are changing.

By now, we know homeless problem is complicated

11/7/2017

Maybe you’ve seen them — tents and sleeping bags suddenly appearing in places they weren’t before, unkempt people wandering or congregating in neighborhoods once considered far from Salt Lake City’s homeless problem.

Salt Lake police detective Greg Wilking recently told the Deseret News that many of the people who caused problems in the Rio Grande neighborhood, site of the city’s main homeless shelter, were not homeless at all.

Mass shooting in '49 shows how long we've been dealing with a problem that seems to have no solution

11/6/2017

“I was about to hang up when I heard the receiver go up on the other end of the line.
‘Hello,’ said a strong, clear voice.
‘Is this Howard?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said the voice, ‘this is Howard. What’s the last name of the party you want?’
Breathless, I strained my ears to catch the sound of shooting, but there was only silence. It seemed as though the man at the other end of the line had clapped his hand over the receiver to shut out the

Brace yourself, Utah; Trump is coming to town

11/1/2017

For a civic leader just about anywhere in America, one of the worst sentences to hear may be, “The president has announced he’s coming to town.”

That could be trumped (pardon the pun) only by this sentence: “And he’s going to make a controversial announcement.”

So, Merry Christmas, Utah!

The White House announced last week that

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