All Categories - Jay Evensen

France's riots could be a preview of the U.S. in 2032

3/22/2023

Take a good look at the riots in cities across France right now. They could be a preview of what’s coming to the United States in less than a decade.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Politicians on both sides of the aisle could get serious about Social Security reforms and head off a depletion of the program’s trust fund. Unfortunately, so far many of them, and the president, seem to have decided instead to retreat inside political bunkers and lob verbal grenades.
That’s a shame, because studies have shown there is common ground between voters on both sides of the political spectrum.

Bank bailouts should remind us of the first FDIC recipient

3/15/2023

Press accounts described 66-year-old Lydia Lobsiger as wearing a “freshly laundered gingham dress” with a black straw hat on her head on July 5, 1934. What they didn’t describe was the stern matter-of-fact expression on her face as she looked at the camera, her left hand loosely holding one end of a check that also was held by a balding man in a suit, his face expressionless. In her right arm, she carried her 3-year-old granddaughter.

Utah kicks the beehive with its new state flag

3/2/2023

Utah Sen. Dan McCay may have said it best in a Senate hearing. When people hear the Legislature is changing the state flag, he said, they often say it’s a waste of time, and that no one cares.
But that’s not true.
“What I’ve quickly learned is that everyone cares about flags,” he said.
McCay, a Republican from Riverton, was the Senate sponsor of SB31, which created a new Utah flag he hopes will soon begin to adorn ballcaps, T-shirts, mugs and anything else suitable for a symbol that invokes pride. He seemed genuinely surprised by what he had wrought.
“Flag bills are hard,” he said. “Really hard!”

Let's finally ditch the grocery tax in Utah

2/27/2023

Applying sales taxes to groceries is like forming a basketball league in which the hoop is ratcheted progressively higher for shorter players.
No one denies it is a regressive tax. The very poorest of Utahns qualify for food stamps or other programs, but those on the edge — struggling families or retirees — pay the most as a percentage of their income. Normally, sales taxes are fair because they are voluntary. If you don’t want to pay it, don’t buy the item you’re looking at, or find it at a lower price somewhere else.

Shaq and Barkley say we're boring. Who cares?

2/22/2023

You could make it a parlor game. Whenever the NBA puts Salt Lake City in the limelight, gather friends and take turns guessing how long it will take before some well-known figure plays the “boring” card.
This time, it happened during the All-Star Game on Sunday, when Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal started bantering about it. Shaq said he had never eaten so much room service in his life, while Barkley said something about everyone going to heaven here.
First, this was ironic coming in the middle of a game that may have been the most boring of all time. One of the coaches, Denver’s Michael Malone, called it “the worst basketball game ever played.” It had all the excitement of a pre-game shoot around.
But, all that aside, the worst part was that locals fell for it again. As soon as Barkley and Shaq spoke, social media lit up with people defending the city or, alternately, agreeing it was boring. The mayor got involved, which is OK because her job is to defend the city.

What's the plan for saving Social Security?

2/16/2023

President Biden roused Republicans catcalls during his recent state of the union address by suggesting the GOP wanted to end Social Security. On television, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, could be seen pointing her finger at the president and yelling, “Liar!”
It was political theater designed to draw a clear line between the parties, but it left one important question unanswered.
How is the nation going to deal with the fast-approaching freight train of Social Security insolvency?

Should the law force people to vote?

2/16/2023

The United States will never be Australia. Americans aren’t going to take to football on an oval field, and they aren’t going to embrace the concept of the government forcing them to vote.
At least not right now.
Rep. Joel Briscoe, D-Salt Lake City, has his eyes on the long game. That’s why he’s sponsoring HB452 in this year’s legislative session, knowing full well it won’t go anywhere, at least not now.

Republicans must force Santos to leave Congress

2/13/2023

“I say it is the moon that shines so bright.”
“I know it is the sun that shines so bright.”
— Dialog between Petruchio and Katherina in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.”

You don’t have to know Shakespeare to appreciate how people sometimes lie to gain an advantage, whether it involves stretching the truth to get someone to like them or more serious lies to obtain money or favors or to cover up crimes.
And lies in Washington? Well, where to begin? The fictional Captain Louis Renault in the movie “Casablanca” comes to mind. I can almost picture him, with an ironic smile, standing in the House chamber and exclaiming in feigned disbelief, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that lying is going on here!”

Will ranked choice voting survive politics?

2/7/2023

The days of ranked-choice voting — currently a pilot program available for municipal elections — may be numbered in Utah.
I was about to say that the pun was intentional, but the whole sentence might, in fact, be literal.
While some Utah lawmakers want to end the pilot program now, despite several cities having adopted it, others want to add yet another possible voting system — approval voting — to a list of options cities could select.
Sure, why not make things even more complicated?

Why not set a goal for how high the lake should rise?

2/3/2023

Time can change a person’s perspective.
In 1996, I wrote a column that described, accurately, the “great enigma” that the Great Salt Lake was for Utah residents. Relatives or friends would come to the state for the first time and inevitably ask to see it. But people who live here knew such a visit, especially to the south shore, would be smelly and filled with brine flies.
The lake was, I wrote, “like a temperamental movie star who happens to live in your backyard. Everyone wants to come see him, but you feel an obligation to explain first that he's drunk, he hasn't bathed in several days …”

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