Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

As the '20s begin to roar, will we listen to the past?

12/31/2019

Sometimes, the rearview mirror can teach lessons.
Travel with me back 100 years from last night. No matter what you were doing to usher in 2020, it probably couldn’t compare with downtown Salt Lake City at the dawn of 1920. The Deseret News described it as “a sort of Mardi Gras on Main Street.” Revelers wore masks and fancy caps “and an assortment of highly colored decorations.” They threw confetti on each other and made noise with cowbells, fish horns, tin cans attached to strings and ratchet wheels.

America's debt - the challenge of the 2002 election

12/26/2019

Consider Venezuela, a place where, according to recent news reports, the currency has become so worthless that people across the border in Colombia are using it to make wallets and purses.
You can get a coin purse made with 100 bolivares for a reasonable price, a Fox News report said. If the artisan needs more materials, he just sends his brother back to Venezuela to stuff his pockets with more.

Tax reform veto is doomed to fail

12/18/2019

One group will count on volunteers to gather the signatures needed to overturn Utah’s new tax reform law. The other group says that’s naive and promises to use paid signature gatherers; but it admits that, as yet, it has no money.
Naive is as naive does, I suppose. But if both efforts go forward as described in a Deseret News report Tuesday, I wouldn’t count on seeing a tax reform veto on your 2020 ballot, no matter how angry you may feel about it.

Tump's pick could shake up homeless efforts

12/17/2019

As with many of President Donald Trump’s appointments, Dr. Robert Marbut has vocal, passionate critics.
He answers them with just as much passion.
Marbut was recently confirmed as the administration’s new homeless czar. That’s a catchy title evoking images of a former Russian leader wandering the streets after the Bolshevik revolution, so I’ll be more specific. He is the new head of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, an organization that coordinates with 19 federal departments and agencies to address homelessness nationwide.

Can Salt Lake keep from becoming San Francisco

12/11/2019

The irony was hard to miss.
A group from the Utah League of Cities and Towns met with the combined Deseret News and KSL editorial boards this week to tout, among other things, last year’s passage of SB34 by the state Legislature, a bill designed to encourage construction of more affordable housing.
But almost simultaneous with the meeting came a report from the Salt Lake Board of Realtors showing the median home price in Salt Lake County had reached $389,000, a new record high.
I’ve written before that the Wasatch Front is on a fast-moving trend to become the San Francisco of the Mountain West in terms of house prices. This report adds fuel to that concern, as well as to the need for solutions.

Should Utah's income tax earmark be taken away?

12/10/2019

As Utah lawmakers race to pass part of a mammoth tax reform effort, an almost forgotten conservative principle is becoming an underlying theme: Earmarked spending is bad.
Utah’s constitution currently requires that all income tax collections go exclusively to public and higher education. And while that may give educators a sense of security, it also ties lawmakers’ hands in ways that keep them from truly doing what they were elected to do, which is to study all the state’s needs and set funding priorities.

Can the First Amendment survive the internet age?

12/4/2019

Years ago, when I was in charge of publishing letters to the editor, I posted a quote from John Milton, a 17th century poet, author and inspiration for the Constitution’s First Amendment, on the side of my computer. It said:
“And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter?"

Utah tax reform: Here are four things to consider

12/3/2019

Utah lawmakers seem intent on holding a special session a week from Thursday to begin passing a tax overhaul package that has more moving parts than anything you will assemble Christmas morning.
In government, parts tend to move in unintended ways. In that sense, haste may not always make waste, but it may make things people can’t foresee.
But if legislators insist on being hasty, here are four things they at least ought to keep in mind.
First, don’t tell Utahns you are “restoring” the full state portion of the sales tax on groceries. That language assumes the money rightfully belongs to the government, not the people being taxed. Republicans understood this concept well a decade ago when they fought efforts to “restore” the Bush tax cuts.

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