Death by 1,000 Cuts
Here we go again with our Republican ideologies hanging on in desperation to the self-defeating delusion that taxes are bad, and the rich will save us. Enter Gov. Spencer Cox's budget proposal and the manic intent to slash cash for schools while offering them a handout. "We are rich enough as a state that there is no need to raise tax rates. Just don't be so quick to cut them," implores The Salt Lake Tribune's George Pyle. And, "Putting more money in people's pockets willincrease demand for goodsat a time of supply shortages. That will drive up prices and worsen the inflation that the governors claim to be so worried about," the Brookings Institution says in a Note to Governors. Our Legislature is intent on cutting taxes and assures everyone that a small constitutional set-aside for schools will be good enough. WalletHub ranks Utah 51st for its student-to-teacher ratio and50th for public school spending per student as we continue to trend down.
Not So Fast
There is plenty you can say about our not-so-plentiful water in Utah. Still, we fully expect the Legislature to look at the recent snowpack and exclaim that the drought is over, and climate change is a hoax. It's not. Utahns have been happy to see the focus move to saving the Great Salt Lake and yet, sometimes, our business-centric tenets get in the way. Take the governor's recent about-face on US Magnesium. The company—admittedly a big deal for the worldwide supply of magnesium—wanted to dredge two canals to pump water from the lake, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. The governor's Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office was all for it—until the swift and massive public backlash. It now appears to be equivocating as it weighs disaster for the company against disaster for the ecosystem that supports just about every living thing in Utah.
Morality Police
Sen. Mike Lee fancies himself as a certain Captain Moroni against the scourge of pornography. Well, if you can't kill it, define it. Lee has proposed legislation to officially define "obscenity," he said in a press release. It's not protected by the First Amendment, and Lee notes that the Supreme Court just can't seem to define it. His bill, among other things, would remove the requirement that obscenity has to abuse, threaten or harass someone before it can be banned. Obscenity is a little different from pornography, although both are constantly on the minds of far-right conservatives—the ones who believe Hillary Clinton killed babies in a pizza parlor. Each of the 50 states has some form of obscenity law on the books, but Lee thinks he can wrangle them all together and make sense of an issue that has been around since the 1800s. Whether he would define obscenity as Trump talking about grabbing women "by the pussy" is still unclear.
