All Categories - Jay Evensen

Why the Jeopardy! tournament was a good sign for the U.S.

1/15/2020

The answer is: It attracted about 15 million viewers per episode.
The question? Why was the just-completed “Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time” tournament such a good sign for America?
That kind of viewership, as Deseret News writer Lottie Johnson put into perspective Wednesday morning, is at a level similar to the audiences the NBA Finals and the World Series tend to draw.
Perhaps this tells us something about ourselves that we have been conditioned not to believe. Brain sports can be big money.

Here's how the governor would change education in Utah

1/14/2020

Gov. Gary Herbert has quietly raised, once again, what may be the most important question concerning public schools in Utah — one that goes directly to what one former Democratic lawmaker once told me was the state’s “dirty little secret.”
It is: Who controls education in Utah?

As I told you, fears about a .05 DUI law were unfounded

1/8/2020

I hate to say I told you so.
But, I told you so.
I told you, two years ago, that Utah’s first-in-the-nation law reducing the official drunk-driving level to a .05 blood alcohol content would have little impact on anything, other than to save some lives. Because you can’t count lives that weren’t lost, you won’t see any headlines about that one. We do know, however, that all the frantic warnings about innocent people behind bars and hits to tourism were wrong.

Why will Utah soon make gas much more expensive?

1/7/2020

Why is the state of Utah loading the price of gasoline with so many taxes?
If you didn’t know this is coming, you soon will.
The newly passed tax reform law will, for the first time, apply sales taxes to gasoline which, when the law takes full effect later this spring, could add as much as 11 cents to each gallon purchased. And the State Tax Commission, using a formula set forth in state law, announced that the regular gas tax also would go up by 1.1 cents per gallon, to a total of 31.1 cents, in the new year.

Why the '10s was the best decade ever

1/2/2020

In 1959, the average pop can contained 85 grams of aluminum, and recycling, for the most part, was just a word in the dictionary.
Today, a pop can contains 13 grams of aluminum, and most of it is recycled.
That’s just one tidbit uncovered by science writer Matt Ridley in a recent edition of the British publication The Spectator.
Ridley’s argument is that we’ve just finished the best decade in the history of mankind.
He’s right. It’s also the latest in a long line of best decades.

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.

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