 | The same $100 bill buys different amounts in each of the 50 states. That shouldn’t surprise anybody. A two-bedroom apartment in Mississippi costs about $769 per month, according to MyApartmentMap.com. The same unit would cost about $2,785 in New York. A gallon of gas costs $1.81 in South Carolina, according to gasbuddy.com. It costs $2.32 in Utah and $2.74 in Hawaii. Those figures have a significant impact on the standard of living in each of these states, as well as on how much someone would need to earn in order to live comfortably. Many of us instinctively understand this, especially if we travel frequently. |
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 Show of hands — among those of you who pay for a cable TV service, how many of you were lured there by the promise of hundreds of channels, most of which were presented as acronyms that meant as much to you as a list of federal agencies in Washington?
OK, now, how many of you signed up mainly because you wanted access to one or two specific channels, such as ESPN or HGTV, or perhaps you wanted to see BYU games or Jazz games or watch the History Channel? If my guess is right, your house is a lot like
 If you were to guess, off the top of your head, which government programs would get the kind of bipartisan support needed to pass a deeply divided Congress, would a tax to promote live Christmas tree sales make the list?
Well, grandma may or not have been run over by a reindeer, but you just got smacked by another special interest. And at a time when government seems to be increasingly hostile to religion — even trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to sign a paper consenting to their workers receiving contraception coverage — isn’t it a bit ironic that Washington finds it in government’s best interest to urge you to put a real tree in your house to celebrate the birth of Christ? And you thought folks in Washington had forgotten how to pronounce the word “Christmas.”  It turns out TSA agents really are sitting in a private room somewhere laughing at how you look naked on a full-body scanner, your feet spread slightly and your hands over your head.
Tell me you’re not surprised. Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz isn’t. When I got him on the phone, he was at an airport, of all places, waiting for a flight from Washington to Salt Lake City. He refrained from saying, “I told you so,” but he was happy to point out the obvious. “Now we find the allegations to be true. The TSA always insisted they don’t capture that image of you. Well, yeah, they do, and they’re laughing at you,” he said. Late last week, former TSA agent Jason Edward Harrington  One online commenter to a recent report on public attacks against religion pointed to what he called “The fundamental and very real difference between poking fun (even to the point of ridicule) at someone because of their race and someone’s religious beliefs.”
He was implying that religion is merely a choice, or as others have put it, you can’t pick your skin color, but you can pick your church. You also, presumably, could choose not to go to church, which many would consider more convenient when it comes to expressing opinions on current events. Attached to another recent story about an increase in violence toward religious people worldwide was a comment that said the persecution is happening because religions have overreached “into political and public policies and (are)  It’s hard to imagine too many causes that would bring together conservatives such as former Utah Gov. Norm Bangerter and former Utah Sen. Jake Garn and liberal activists such as singer-song writer Bonnie Raitt and Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame.
But when that happens, it’s probably good to pay attention. All four were among 114 people who signed an appeal to President Barack Obama in recent days |
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The author
Jay Evensen is the Opinion Editor of the Deseret News. He has more than 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities. Archives
December 2024
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