Jay Evensen
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On Second Thought for Dec. 2, 2012

11/30/2012

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The state of Utah is expanding its air quality alert system to include six colors instead of three. But for the average citizen, the only important color is blue, which is what you turn when you no longer can breathe.
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At higher pollution levels, people will be encouraged to avoid outdoor exercise. From my observations, this is no problem for the vast majority of people, even on clear days.
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We’re happy to do our civic duty and remain sedentary. Would it help if we ate some chocolate, too?
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Utah’s valleys are the reason Santa Claus has to carry fog lights and specially designed reindeer oxygen masks on his sleigh.
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Why is it that when the government spends more money than it has, we call it a fiscal cliff and say it threatens the economy, but when Black Friday comes and average people spend more than they have, we cheer and say the economy is recovering?
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If a majority of Americans think it’s time to tax the rich more in order to solve the nation’s problems, why did so many people go ga-ga last week over the lottery, the only tax scheme that tries to fool the poor into giving up their rent money?
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The Powerball produced two winners last week. The bad news is they instantly went from the 47 percent to the 1 percent, which means, if Democrats get their way, they soon will be paying 39.6 percent. Got that?
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I don’t want to say negotiations to avoid the “fiscal cliff” in Washington are discouraging, but you might want to ask Santa for some rappelling equipment this year.
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A congressional committee held a hearing last week to consider getting rid of dollar bills and replacing them with coins. When asked their opinion, millions of holiday shoppers paused with their credit cards and smart phone payment apps in hand and said, “What are bills and coins?”
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Switching to dollar coins would save billions each year. Switching to thin air, which is where most of your money goes anyway, would save even more.
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Here’s an alternative for those who want to keep paper dollars: Reduce their size each year commensurate with the inflation rate. That would save paper and ink costs, and when a dollar becomes the size of something your paper shredder might produce, people will clamor for coins.
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You could hardly blame The People’s Daily in China for thinking The Onion was serious when it named North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the “sexiest man alive” last week. Say what you want about Western culture, we don’t generally joke about such things.
Jay Evensen is the associate editor of the Deseret News editorial page. Follow him on Twitter @jayevensen.
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"On Second Thought" for Nov. 19, 2012

11/13/2012

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  • After the election, several people posted petitions on the White House web site asking for their state to secede from the union. Utah's said the people want to "here buy govern ourselves..." Sounds like consumerism run amok.
  • President Obama presented a plan last week that would impose heavy tax increases on the top 2 percent of the nation’s wage earners. That noise you heard was a small portion of the 99 percent crying out, “Say what?”
  • Republicans, meanwhile, are holding firm on no new taxes at all. If the fiscal cliff was a real cliff, both sides would be pushing each other toward it, oblivious that they are tied together by a rope.
  •  Salt Lake City is in a bind because traffic tickets and parking citations are running $2.2 million short of expectations. No word yet on whether the mayor will propose a public service campaign to promote reckless driving.
  • The outgoing mayor of Salt Lake County, meanwhile, has proposed a 17 percent increase in property taxes. It's the kind of thing mayors often do when leaving office, figuring they no longer can be hurt politically. That's why we should never impose terms limits on these jobs.
  • Without this tax hike, Corroon said important services would be cut and county employees would not have their compensation packages restored to pre-recession levels. This is what is known as a fiscal pothole.
  • Sometimes the job of being a citizen can be downright taxing.
  •  New this week, just in time for those "As the World Turns" fans who are still mourning the loss of the television soap opera — the David Petraeus scandal.
  • The Petraeus scandal had everything — betrayal, jealousy, passion, a hero's fall from grace and a shirtless FBI agent. It was almost enough to make us all forget the Middle East was coming apart at the seams.
  • Steven Spielberg's newest movie is about Abraham Lincoln. It takes viewers to a strange time when a controversial president had just won re-election and was presiding over a divided country, trying to get a lame-duck Congress to pass important legislation.
  • The Civil War, now THAT was a fiscal cliff.
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"On Second Thought" for Nov. 11, 2012

11/13/2012

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  • For many months, politicians held off on the big decisions, saying voters would decide the nation’s direction on Election Day. What they didn’t count on was voters deciding to keep things as they are. Apparently, hope is stronger than change.
  • Billions of dollars were spent on campaigns that basically didn’t change a thing. That’s like spending a fortune on a college education, only to be handed your high school diploma again at the end.
  • Election officials in Florida, otherwise known as camera hogs, must have been disappointed when the presidential race was decided without them.
  • Ballots in Florida contained 11 proposed constitutional amendments, one of which was about 700 words long. By Friday it still wasn’t clear which candidate won, possibly because people were still standing in line to vote. Rumor has it officials were hoping to combine films from 2012 and 2000 to create a pilot for a new reality TV show.
  • Chef Gordon Ramsay could star as the Florida secretary of state. As the weekly episodes progress, he would eliminate both incompetent election judges and spoiled ballots. At the end of the season, viewers finally would learn which candidates gets Florida’s electoral votes — in the 2000 election.
  • If only Franz Kafka still were alive, student’s one day would have to read “The Castle,” “The Trial” and “The Florida Voting Booth.”
  • Election Day always ends with a ray of hope, as one candidate concedes and offers to support the other and the winner graciously thanks the loser. If only talk radio hosts could adopt a similar tradition.
  • President Obama’s victory speech was so touching that it took almost 24 hours for him and Republican leaders to again dig in their heels over the looming “fiscal cliff.”
  • It says something about the nation’s lack of confidence in the future when it voted to keep the same people in power and two states decided to also make marijuana legal.
  • If negative advertising is really so effective, why don’t companies make commercials that scream at viewers for being idiots if they buy something else?
  • A driver in Kaysville last week got angry at another driver, forced her to stop, got out and looked ready to do violence. That’s when the other driver, who happened to be a police officer in an unmarked car, turned on the hidden police lights. This is what is known as a fantasy come true.
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