It isn’t often that I can say Bob Lonsberry is exactly correct about something. This article is one of those few cases.
UPDATE 04/18/2008 11:03AM: Guy Murray at Messenger and Advocate has an even better rundown on the weakness of Texas’ case after the first day of hearings.
H/T Alienated Wannabe
Yeah…I’ve got it and its nasty. I haven’t been around everyone’s favorite militant progressive at all lately but his symptoms sound like what I’ve got. It stinks.
Since I’m tired and miserable I’m only going to link to other people today and call that fulfilling my blogging responsibilities:
Bob Rules. Sign the petition.
Paramaphil thinks Sen. Margaret Dayton is worse than Buttars when it comes to stupid racist statements. He makes a great argument. Who would have thought someone would say something even more stupid than the “black baby” comment.
For The People catches Sen. Buttars in a lie.
David at Pursuit of Liberty links to an excellent description of why the free traders are right and Lou Dobbs is an idiot.
Frank Staheli thinks American militarism is expanding in a very real and scary way. As usual he’s right.
RudiZink points out that the legislature is owned lock stock and barrel by real estate developers who would sell their own mothers for a little more easy month. We should spend a little less time focusing on fools like Sen. Buttars and more focusing on the blatant corruption on display daily from the legislature. Thank you WCF.
Utah may have its problems…but our local blogosphere rocks.
Today Mitt Romney took advantage of the foolishness of those in the media who have been trying to make his religion a negative issue he needs to deal with. Truth be told there is nothing Romney could say in a speech that would mollify those who won’t vote for a Mormon. Instead of even trying to defend himself from attacks on his faith he crafted a well written attack on the tiny minority of Americans who are aggresively anti-religious. He didn’t bother to defend Mormonism and he got a huge amount of publicity for a speech that nearly every Republican primary voter can identify with. The press and Romney’s opponents may continue to try to use his religion against him but that doesn’t change the fact that Romney made very good use of this issue today in his “JFK style” speech.
I’ve never argued that Romney isn’t a very shrewd politician…in fact…I won’t vote for him because I think he’s too shrewd by half.
Yesterday’s Standard-Examiner editorialized in favor of disclosing all records (sale prices) for real estate transactions in Utah. Utah is currently one of only eight states in the nation that are non-disclosure states. The S-E’s reasoning that county assessors can more fairly determine market values for all properties if disclosure is the law is right on.
Under Utah’s current system high end properties aren’t fairly assessed (they’re often extremely low) because most property sales that could be used for comparison purposes in appraising these parcels aren’t sold through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) maintained by Utah’s Realtors. This database is currently the only available source for real estate sales data. Until our legislature ends non-disclosure and breaks the Board of Realtor’s stranglehold on nearly all real estate market data, middle class and poor Utahns will continue to take on a substantial share of the tax burden that rightfully belongs to some of Utah’s wealthiest residents.
Thank you Standard-Examiner. Non-disclosure in Utah isn’t yet truly threatened but your voice definitely helps.
From an email today:
Did you hear the new pro-voucher radio ad? …I have heard it two or three times now and have to laugh at it. It paints the NEA as a Nazi liberal Clinton following camp, hoping that we’re all idiots who won’t realize that the NEA is being kind enough to step in to help our underpaid Utah public teachers.
My question in response to this ad is, do you think our current public school teachers, (who are vehemently against the voucher system) are in it for the money? Or do they really care about our children as a whole.
Lately the pro-voucher campaign’s main argument for vouchers seems be the fact that the UEA is against them. Why would they think this point will resonate with voters? I’m certainly no fan of many of the things UEA advocates but I do recognize that if the vast majority of Utah’s teachers are against vouchers maybe we should hear them out.
I shouldn’t complain about the self-destructive campaign PCE is waging but when I see them do stupid things I can’t help but wonder why they think they’re on the right track. Here’s some free advice for PCE/ACM and other pro-voucher campaigns. We Utahns don’t hate our educators nearly as much as you do. Spending money on ads which demonize our public school teachers will never convince us that this voucher plan is a good idea.
I just want to publicly thank Tom at KVNU for introducing me to Jake Boyd, an American hero.
The Pew Foundation has published this transcript of an interview of Richard Bushman by a whole mob of reporters from the main stream media. This is the most interesting discussion on the topic of LDS and politics in both the contemporary and historical context that I’ve ever read. Professor Bushman did an excellent job explaining the church’s role in politics and government to a sometimes openly skeptical audience. Definitely worth a read.
Hat Tip BCC
I fear that by linking to the story below I am contributing to the problem. This fear is balanced by my desire to speak publicly in an effort to point out how stupid it is for newspapers to do stuff like this. My vain hope is that media outlets will consider the ramifications of the things they publish before putting stories like this out if lots of us provide them with enough public criticism.
Yesterday’s Clipper has an article and large color photo front page above the fold announcing the presence of the KKK in Davis County.
FARMINGTON — They’re everywhere, and that includes Davis County. The Ku Klux Klan. The group notorious for a history of racism, violence and intimidation has members living and working in Davis County and throughout the state of Utah.
“We have a small number of active Klan members in Davis County,” said Imperial Wizard of the Brotherhood of the Klan, Dale Fox just prior to his death recently. “The members are active, but quiet.”
Fox said the number of actual Klansmen in Davis County is at 21, but that there is a strong movement to recruit new members along the entire Wasatch Front.
I didn’t know about the Klan presence in Davis County before reading this story. I’d bet most other people in Davis County didn’t either. Now we all do. Normal people, Racists, Bigots, and other assorted idiots of every type all now know about the Klan in Davis County which is “conducting a strong movement to recruit new members along the entire Wasatch Front.”
We’d have all been better off if the Clipper hadn’t provided them so much free advertising.
This looks like a good chance for Utah/Davis County Bloggers to get together to help a member of our online community who is running for office!
Blogging has provided a great outlet for many of us to openly declare our views on news and the current policy discussions of the day. When one of our number takes a shot at running for office we should support him! Politicians who blog bring an openness to public policy that has never before existed and everyone benefits.
Rob Miller is doing a press conference at Noon Tuesday at the Old Courthouse in Farmington. It would be cool if there were lots of bloggers on hand at the event to give him support! It will be a great chance for many of us to get to know each other in real life…not just on the blogs!
Here’s the Deseret News on Sen. Chris Buttar’s efforts to back away from comments he made about Brown v. Board of Education.
He expressed frustration at the attention to his statements on Brown v. Board, saying “everybody who touches this gets totally beat up.
“The obvious answer is Brown v. Board of Education was brilliant, whether there was a downside, or not, I’m through talking about that,” Buttars said. “It isn’t even something on my mind, it hasn’t been on my mind ever, as far as legislation. It is over and done with, and I don’t think it’s a problem in Utah.”
Its hard not to enjoy watching this guy squirm.
When I moved to Utah I wanted to get up to speed with what Utah Politics was all about. After being gone for 7.5 years I really had no idea what was going on or who was who. I found the Utah Policy Daily website and decided to read it every day for a week (then subscribing to their daily email) and was very surprised that it nearly brought me completely up to speed in that short time. Now after nearly 4 months of reading their update every day it has become even more clear that they provide the best collection of each day’s Utah political news on the web.
Check out today’s message to see what the Utah Policy Daily is all about and if you are interested in being kept up to date with politics in this silly state you really should subscribe.
Congratulations and thanks to Lavar Webb and team for their two years of great service to Utah’s political junkies. Good luck in the future!
I read a lot of news from Utah. I happened to read two articles about former governor Mike Leavitt today. It is interesting to see how two different papers handled issues dealing with Leavitt. To be fair they are on completely different topics…but topical content wasn’t what I was comparing.
This “news” story from the Deseret News couldn’t be any more sympathetic to everything Leavitt did as governor if it were a piece of campaign literature. Sure Leavitt had some good ideas in the area of technology and policy but he had some pretty crappy ideas too (e.g. his plan to tax internet sales). The author of this article didn’t even pretend to try to be balanced.
This article in the Trib is very anti-Leavitt but it is clearly an actual news story…it doesn’t display either venomous hatred of the ex-gov or fawning love.
In this case I’d have to say: Advantage Tribune.
(The Tribune story also quotes Dan’s dad. Pretty cool.)
