Opinion - Editorial - The Salt Lake Tribune

Keep the regents

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:00:03 MDT

Keep the regents

Published Feb 12, 2012 11:00PM MDT

Some state legislators seem determined to fix higher education by removing oversight by a board of 16 regents appointed by the governor. The fact is, though, that the system already works pretty well. The Legislature passed a bill to give the governor and Senate authority to approve the appointment or dismissal of a commissioner of higher education. Currently the regents hire and fire the commissioner. The bill would require regents instead to submit their recommendation for any new commissione...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Abortion waiting

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:00:03 MDT

Abortion waiting

Published Feb 12, 2012 11:00PM MDT

Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, is leading an effort in the Legislature to extend the waiting period prior to an abortion from 24 hours to 72. The presumption that underlies this bill is that women who seek an abortion are incompetent, ignorant or immoral. Given more time, they would make a different decision. That’s an outrageous assumption. Utah’s abortion law already requires that a woman seeking an abortion be provided detailed information about the medical consequences to herself and the fetu...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Money down

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:01:05 MDT

Money down

Published Feb 11, 2012 01:01AM MDT

If the $25 billion deal struck Thursday by five major banks, 49 states and the federal government is viewed as no more than a down payment on the financial sector’s clear responsibility to clean up the mess that it made of the American housing market, and thus of the whole economy, then it is good news. But if the big banks think they are now in the clear because of a program to help maybe a million homeowners save their homes from foreclosure, or receive some small recompense for properties th...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Thumbs: Short takes on issues

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:01:05 MDT

Thumbs: Short takes on issues

Published Feb 11, 2012 01:01AM MDT

Cancer docs and drugs • The traditional separation between doctors who prescribe drugs and pharmacists who sell them serves two primary purposes. Doctors have no incentive to prescribe unnecessary medicines because they aren’t making any money. And a pharmacist provides another pair of expert eyes to be sure that one drug, or a mixture, does not pose a danger to the patient. But those worthy goals are not enough to overcome a good idea from some Utah cancer specialists, supported by the Utah Med...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Elevating ignorance

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:15:02 MDT

Elevating ignorance

Published Feb 10, 2012 11:15PM MDT

There is only one thing worse than the kind of tepid, inadequate sex education that teenagers receive in Utah public schools. And that’s no sex education at all. But that’s exactly what Rep. Bill Wright is proposing, with the strong arm of Gayle Ruzicka behind him. Wright, a Republican and dairy farmer from Holden, and Ruzicka, longtime leader of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum, want to allow school districts to drop sex education from the curriculum. But what Wright and Ruzicka really wanted...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Ban car phoning

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:01:03 MDT

Ban car phoning

Published Feb 10, 2012 01:01AM MDT

There’s no disputing that it’s dangerous to talk on the phone while driving. For the safety of people traveling Utah’s roads, the Legislature should outlaw driving while phoning. However, lawmakers have repeatedly refused to do that, arguing that it would be an intrusion on personal freedom and on people whose business relies on them phoning while driving. It appears, then, that the best hope for improved cell phone safety in the current legislative session is a bill that would outlaw phoning w...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Show your work

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:01:03 MDT

Show your work

Published Feb 10, 2012 01:01AM MDT

When a math teacher wants to know that a student really understood how to solve a complex problem, and didn’t just make a lucky guess or crib off the student at the next desk, they put this direction at the top of the test: “Show your work.” That is what the Utah Open And Public Meetings Act is all about. In order for the public to fully understand not just what the laws and regulations are, but how they came to be, legislative sessions and committee meetings, as well as meetings of state board...

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Nonpersons

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:01:05 MDT

Nonpersons

Published Feb 9, 2012 01:01AM MDT

The Utah House last week passed a bill with the stated goal of making Utah look marginally more democratic than it really is, by actually making it slightly less democratic. Call it voter suppression lite. Sponsor Rep. Kraig Powell, a Heber City Republican, convinced 45 other representatives, including some Democrats, to approve his HB253. That bill would set up a multi-stage process that would end with some seldom-participating voters being struck from the rolls. Because it is likely such a la...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

State pay increase

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:01:05 MDT

State pay increase

Published Feb 9, 2012 01:01AM MDT

There are many workers in America — in both the public and private sectors — who have not seen a pay increase for years. The effects of the Great Recession are still apparent in frozen wages and lost retirement benefits as well as high unemployment. But here in Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert believes the state can afford to give state employees a 1 percent raise in the coming fiscal year. That’s good news for public school teachers and others. However, he has neglected to include employees of state co...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Magical thinking

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:01:03 MDT

Magical thinking

Published Feb 8, 2012 01:01AM MDT

It’s appropriate that Gov. Gary Herbert, in attacking a federal proposal to restrict the amount of public land available for oil shale and tar sands mining, should accuse the Bureau of Land Management of waving a “bureaucratic magic wand.” Because all the proposed rule would do is cut back on the amount of land where people would be allowed to carry out some magical alchemy that no one yet knows how to do. Talk about hocus-pocus. The BLM posted its draft rule for public comment Friday. And Herb...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Olympics again

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:01:03 MDT

Olympics again

Published Feb 8, 2012 01:01AM MDT

It’s time to rekindle the fire within. Salt Lake City should make a bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. After all, Utah has done this before, staging perhaps the most successful Winter Olympics ever in 2002. Many of the reasons for that success remain. Utah’s capital city still offers something that few other bidders anywhere else can match: real-city amenities and transportation systems within close proximity to world-class skiing. The venues built for the 2002 games would have to be upgraded or...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Missed opportunity

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:01:03 MDT

Missed opportunity

Published Feb 7, 2012 01:01AM MDT

The NFL and the producers of the Super Bowl pregame and halftime shows blew it. It was a perfect opportunity to stage a national welcome home celebration for soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, we got Madonna. Not that there’s anything wrong with pop-star extravaganzas at halftime under different circumstances. But the timing was ideal for honoring the troops, many of whom have sacrificed enormously through multiple deployments in hellish circumstances. We don’t know whether N...

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Just evil

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:10:03 MDT

Just evil

Published Feb 6, 2012 03:10PM MDT

Sunday morning, there were more than a few people who suspected that Josh Powell was a murderer. Sunday evening, there was no longer any doubt. In between, Powell ushered his two young sons into his home in Graham, Wash., locked out the social worker who had brought them for what was supposed to be a supervised visit, and started a fire that rapidly consumed the house, himself and his two sons. Family, friends and public servants will spend the rest of their lives agonizing over how it all coul...

Saving farmland

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:05:02 MDT

Saving farmland

Published Feb 6, 2012 12:05AM MDT

Much of the Wasatch Front was once farmland. In fact, Davis County, wedged between the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains, has some of the most fertile soil in the country. The trouble is, most of that rich farmland is now under concrete and asphalt. Utah has lost farm acreage equal to the area of the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined over the past 40 years to housing and commercial development. That’s a sad situation that poor planning over the decades has allowed to happen. ...

Online textbooks

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:05:02 MDT

Online textbooks

Published Feb 6, 2012 12:05AM MDT

As any parent of a Utah secondary-school student knows, “free” public education is far from free, despite a constitutional mandate to the contrary. There are fees and extra costs for everything from athletics to music to science. And one of the biggest and constantly rising costs paid by taxpayers is for materials and supplies, especially textbooks. So the Utah State Office of Education deserves to be commended for its forward-thinking initiative to provide free online textbooks. Although book ...

Crying wolf

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:01:07 MDT

Crying wolf

Published Feb 4, 2012 01:01AM MDT

Mike Lee is crying wolf. The junior senator from the state of Utah has gone all ballistic over the fact that President Obama has a marginally different interpretation of the Constitution than he does. Lee is so hot and bothered about it that he is calling Obama a tyrant, comparing the appointment of a mid-level bureaucrat to Pearl Harbor and boasting that he will single-handedly block the Senate from doing its job until the duly elected president of the United States starts following the orders...

Powell pipeline

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:01:06 MDT

Powell pipeline

Published Feb 4, 2012 01:01AM MDT

A legislative task force wants to siphon 15 percent of revenue growth from state sales tax to finance the $1.5 billion Lake Powell Pipeline. That is unacceptable because it would create a funding drought for other essential state programs, from higher education to Medicaid. Last year the Legislature set aside 30 percent of sales tax revenue growth for roads. If it designates another 15 percent for water projects, that would leave only about half of sales-tax income growth to fund increases for ...

Clueless teens

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:50:02 MDT

Clueless teens

Published Feb 2, 2012 07:50PM MDT

If Utah teenagers said they believe the Nile River is in southern Utah and that the American Civil War was fought in Europe, parents, legislators and educators would be horrified at the failure of education in the Beehive State. But a new national survey shows our teens are just as miserably misinformed about sex and pregnancy, and it’s highly unlikely that policy makers will bat an eye over that deficiency. In fact, Utah law prohibits teachers from arming teenagers with the comprehensive sex e...