All Categories - Jay Evensen

Will we ever stop changing the clocks twice a year?

1/23/2025

If one thing is more certain than death and taxes, it is the twice-yearly changing of the clocks. And if one thing is as certain as bills to cut taxes at the Utah Legislature, it is the constant introduction of measures that would keep Beehive State residents from fiddling with those clocks — measures that ultimately change nothing, especially the hands of time.
At the risk of sounding like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, this time could be different.
The reason is simple. The tug-of-war between daylight saving and standard times has caught the attention of Donald Trump.

Should it be easier to run for office in Utah?

1/23/2025

When I started interviewing state Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, this week about his bill that would drastically lower the number of signatures a candidate would need to get on a primary ballot in Utah, I had one thought in mind.
How would Utah handle elections with all those candidates?
One year ago, Utah Republicans faced the names of four candidates on the primary ballot to replace Mitt Romney as the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate. In the race for the third congressional district, party voters faced five choices.
With five on the ballot, someone might win with a little more than 20%. Would that be considered legitimate?
If his bill passes, I asked him, shouldn’t the state adopt a runoff or ranked-choice system for declaring a winner if no one gets a decent percentage of votes (whatever that is)?
But he stopped me cold.

Should NYC variable tolls come to Utah highways?

1/16/2025

New York City’s new congestion tolling system for vehicles traveling south of Manhattan’s 60st Street will be a test of a long-heralded conservative approach to traffic jams, but only if it’s allowed to play out.
Ironically, many conservatives hate it. Chief among its detractors is President-elect Donald Trump, who has said he would find a way to end it once in office. But polls show the public doesn’t like the idea of tolls, period.
If allowed to take hold and evolve, however, it might even find its way to the Wasatch Front, where a form of it already exists.

Do celebrity fire victims deserve our sympathy?

1/16/2025

A hatmaker in Southern California lost his store and some irreplaceable century old tools in the fires that have raged the past several days. I know because, as a hat lover, I followed his work closely.
The outpouring on social media and on sites dedicated to hat lovers has been universally sympathetic. “What can we do to help?” seems to be the most persistent sentiment in a wave of well wishes.
Contrast this to the way many have reacted to the losses experienced by celebrities and other California residents who are known to be wealthy.

How easy should it be to get on a primary ballot?

1/16/2025

When I started interviewing state Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, this week about his bill that would drastically lower the number of signatures a candidate would need to get on a primary ballot in Utah, I had one thought in mind.
How would Utah handle elections with all those candidates?
One year ago, Utah Republicans faced the names of four candidates on the primary ballot to replace Mitt Romney as the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate. In the race for the third congressional district, party voters faced five choices.
With five on the ballot, someone might win with a little more than 20%. Would that be considered legitimate?

Why do we keep electing senior citizens?

1/6/2025

You don’t have to look far to find essays on the importance of societies learning to value older people.
In one example from a few years ago, contributor Percil Stanford wrote for Forbes that the title “older person” “should be a symbol of strength and a repository of treasured experiences and wisdom.
“We can ill afford to not avail ourselves of all that everyone has to offer throughout their life span,” he said.
Well … I think the United States can check this one off its list. We honor our elders so much we keep electing them as our most important and powerful leaders. Voters just replaced the oldest president in history with someone who is 78. At the same time, they elected the third oldest Congress on record.
It’s unclear whether this is a good idea.

Will Musk's efforts be political theater, or serious work?

1/6/2025

Will Elon Musk’s appointment to head a new Department of Government Efficiency (along with Vivek Ramaswamy) become political theater or a serious effort to stop a runaway debt train?
If it’s theater, the nation will remain on course to implode economically within 20 years or so. That’s when, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania, “no amount of future tax increases or spending cuts could avoid the government defaulting on its debt whether explicitly or implicitly.”

The most successful activist you've never heard of

12/31/2024

If Sam Daley-Harris ever retires, it won’t be any time soon. He confides, with a smile, that he just turned 78. And while that may seem fitting for an age when some of the most powerful politicians are octogenarians, his batteries seem to hold a better charge than most.
Success will do that to you, and Daley-Harris is among the most effective advocates and activists in the nation. That’s true, even though you probably haven’t heard of him.
I sat down with him via Zoom earlier in December. This wasn’t the first time. I have written before about the effectiveness of his “transformational advocacy” form of lobbying, which turns ordinary volunteers into mini-experts capable of talking to community, state and congressional leaders, and to editorial writers.

Why you should be optimistic about the future

12/31/2024

In retrospect, maybe the combination toy dog and vacuum cleaner never was destined to make millions.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t creative, or that its inventor, Anne Margaret Zaleski, wasn’t trying to fill a market need when she obtained the patent for it in 1973, according to wipo.int.
My guess is that millions of people own dogs who are deathly afraid of traditional vacuums. It’s just that this invention, designed to help owners clean their pets after a haircut, probably didn’t fool too many canines. Many of them are instinctively skeptical of inanimate dog-looking things that come equipped with a blow dryer in the, shall we say, tail regions.

Reform health care, but not at gunpoint

12/17/2024

No 21st century columnist should have to write this to members of a civil society, but murder is wrong. It is immoral by every measure of that word. That ought to be self-evident.
This is a nation governed by laws and processes, not vigilantism. When people applaud the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as many have done, they dishonor civilization and reveal their own warped sense of ethics.
Ugly as this is, it isn’t new to America. In the 1930s, when the nation was in the grips of the Great Depression, people cheered bank robber and accused murderer John Dillinger when he appeared on newsreels in movie theaters. They hissed when those films showed the federal agents trying to catch him.

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