Dear Governor Herbert,

I read your State of the Union address and thought it was well done. Utah is truly a great place to live and do business, and also for golf, a sport we both enjoy. With the USGA Public Links Championship at Soldier Hollow this year perhaps we can find some time to golf together as part of the occasion.

Your speech was almost entirely positive and I was in agreement almost one hundred percent — except in one glaring way—your expressed antagonism to the federal government. I suppose that was red meat for the GOP, a part of a ritual of being elected in Utah.  It’s the safe, almost required thing to do. It assures an applause line.

However, it is my contention that it is unhealthy for us to continually demean our national government and promote disrespect for it and not give credit where credit is due.

You say government doesn’t create jobs, and that all the credit for a good economy in Utah rests snugly in the trophy case of free enterprise, but that is so obviously and patently untrue that it surprises me that Republican politicians continue to repeat that nonsense without fear of contradiction. I would think that just for the sake of a clear conscience that an occasional Republican would have the personal integrity to refrain from making that absurd statement. Is it part of some secret anti-government Republican oath that requires repeating?

As CEO of the Great State of Utah how many jobs are you supervising? Are these not jobs? Do these people not pay taxes? Are they not providing goods and services? Is there any other CEO in the state supervising more jobs than you? The jobs in Utah’s Higher Education System are some of the most important and esteemed jobs in the state, and surely those government jobs lead to the creation of thousands of free enterprise jobs. Our public school teachers all across this state are preparing our children for college and future employment, not to mention thousands of other state and local employees keeping our important government agencies operating smoothly, services that are absolutely necessary in order for free enterprise to thrive and grow. How are all these government jobs not contributing to a vibrant economy? How would free enterprise survive without them?

How many free enterprise jobs did government create this year with the expansion of I-15 in Utah County? How much did that government project contribute to our economic prosperity?

I drive by Camp Williams quite often and I have been amazed at the number of employee cars parked at the site. One would think there was a BYU or Utah football game being played there. Outside of the LDS City Creek Project the federal government’s National Security Agency project at Camp Williams is probably the originating source of more private enterprise jobs than any other single source this past year. The future high paid government employment figures at NSA will remain high for years to come and will surely enable future governors to take credit for job creation while demeaning the feds for being in the way.

I wonder how our new job report would look without all the jobs made possible this past year by the feds—jobs that were 100% opposed by our Utah congressional delegation. Yes, even our token Democrat has to vote like a Republican (more…)

Violence Against Gays Must Stop!

It Begins in Our Own Hearts!

To all open minded friends and readers:

Please listen to and watch the video in the Visual of the Day section. It is a speech given by Joel Burns of the Ft. Worth, Texas,  City Council.

Watching the video may help each of us realize the serious challenges our gay and lesbian children face growing up in our anti-gay, homophobic society.

Matthew Shepherd was enough. That terrible beating and murder happened in Wyoming more than ten years ago. What has our society learned? Why is it continually repeated? When will the violence against gays stop? When will gays be able to live a normal, constructive, happy life? Why do we stand in the way? Will the next Matthew Shepherd be your son? Or grandson?

We should also ask ourselves what makes our society so anti-gay and homophobic? And what can we do about it? And, seriously, what part does religion and government play in contributing to this environment? And what can religions and government do to change the environment?

When our religious doctrines condemn and shame homosexuals and excommunicates them, when our military won’t accept gays and lesbians, when our own state won’t give gays and lesbians equal protection under the law regarding employment and housing, and when we deny them the right to marry, when we ostracize them in so many ways, how can we expect our children to treat homosexuals any differently? Why do children mock gay children? Is it because their parents and church mocks them?

Are we really willing to live with this environment? What part are we individually playing in contributing to this environment?

How does one realistically separate (more…)

Cael Sanderson, 159-0

(This column was written in 2006 and published in Fairways Magazine)

As children we all choose heroes.

We took personal ownership of our chosen heroes. They were ours. We protected them. We fought for them. We cheered them and defended them. And our heroes were always better than anyone else’s heroes and there were even arguments about it. And when they won we were proud, and their success enhanced our own self value, and in fact, there was a certain unrealistic transformation taking place wherein we actually felt that our support was helping them succeed.

When we discovered that one of our friends also shared our same heroes, then we suddenly realized that our friend was not only a friend, but a friend with very good sense.

My first big hero was Jackie Robinson. After that they came in bunches, including Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Roy Campenella, Ted Williams, and Yogi Berra. New stars would come on the scene, Roger Bannister, Bob Beamon, Mohammed Ali, John Wooden, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. The ones we chose remained our heroes and it took a lot for any other would-be-heroes to bump our originals off the top perch. One of the new ones who has moved right to the top is Tiger Woods, whose composure, grace, and determination are unmatched in golf today.

My heroes were mostly athletes. Subconsciously they were divided into two groups, the ones who were far away we would never know personally, and the ones who defended the home turf and who could be seen and touched, such as dynamic duos Arnie Ferrin and Vern Gardner, Mel Hutchins and Roland Minson, and Stockton to Malone.

As a kid I remember lying on the floor by the radio listening with my dad to the voice say “Let’s go with Utoco to the basketball game,” and cheering whenever the Aggies, Utes, and Cougars were playing.

Time moved on and the hero list grew, and to the top of the list went Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. It grew closer and closer to home with Merlin Olsen, L.J. Silvester, Max Perry, Cornell Green, Bill Munson, (more…)

Proposed Senate Health Care Reform Bill

Should Be Named ‘Hurricane Katrina’

If you’ve observed news reports on the health care reform process you have probably been impressed that Howard Dean is one of the best informed in the country on the issue. He has made good sense all through this process—and now, after working cooperatively with everyone on the issue, and the Dems have completely caved, he has thrown down the gauntlet—-vote NO if this thing doesn’t change for the better.

President Obama and the Senate Democrats have allowed this bill to be butchered to the point of disaster—just to get a bill. In the interest of compromise they have been compromised. Earlier on this blog Watts Cookin wrote a column entitled ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ and that’s what we are getting—-only worse. The lipstick has been smudged all over the pig’s face.

If this bill passes the Senate the only saving grace for the Democrats will be the moment when the House and Senate bills meet at conference. The House bill is much better than the Senate bill and if the bad from the Senate is eliminated and the good from the House can survive then all this discussion is overwrought panic. The senators and the administration are counting on being able to ‘kick over the traces’ at the conference session.

One of the huge albatrosses is the requirement than everyone must buy health insurance, an idea that won’t work and is fundamentally repulsive and is also in the House bill. That clause alone is enough to make a nation sick. It’s a bill that requires getting blood out of a turnip and it ain’t going to happen. Furthermore, it’s not a tax on income or property, it’s a tax on just being alive.  How can we make it mandatory for people to pay for health insurance when they don’t have any money and can’t even get a job? It won’t work without enormous government subsidies, subsidies that will have to increase dramatically every year. What do we do with those who won’t mandate? Throw them in jail? Deny them coverage at emergency rooms?

This Senate bill is about as far away from the ideal Single Payer system as one can imagine. The claim is that this Senate bill will cover some 30 million people who haven’t been covered before. How will that happen? By compelling them to join up at whatever fee the insurance companies demand, and fining them if they don’t? This isn’t free enterprise. This is slavery.

What should be done? The Democrats should (more…)

The Making of a Legend: Merlin Olsen

There’s something special about being able to say “We knew him before the world did!’

To millions of sports fans Merlin Olsen became a legend as one of the Fearsome Foursome of the Los Angeles Rams. He was in the Pro Bowl 14 years, more than anyone else, and never missed a game in his 15 years with the Rams and was inducted into the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he continued his success as a popular television commentator and actor.

Long before that time, as a sophomore at Logan High, and before he had even played one game, he became a football legend to his high school teammates on the first day of practice.

As an awkward, oddly shaped teenager, with head and feet already full grown and anxiously waiting for his body to catch up, the only thing the varsity players knew about him was that he was big and strong and could possibly be a good football player someday—-and that he was only a mere sophomore.

In those days there were no little league or junior high football programs and this mighty man hadn’t played a down of real football anywhere. He was an unknown, even to himself.

At Logan High there was a tradition—-that sophomore’s didn’t go through the varsity dressing room to get to the football field. Sophomores (more…)

Olive Branch from LDS Church Will Be Huge

The announcement that the LDS Church is supportive of the Salt Lake City statute that prohibits discrimination against gays in housing and employment has implications far beyond Salt Lake City and changes the landscape of gay politics, not only in Utah, but across the nation. This is no lightweight matter.

Dr. Gary Watts (my brother), one of Utah’s foremost gay rights activists, and a former Mormon who resigned his church membership over the issue, said, “I believe this is the first time in the history of the church that it has ever publicly said anything supportive of gay rights. It is a sea change and great news and I commend the church for this progress.”

While it was a foregone conclusion that SLC was going to pass the ordinance, the announcement by the LDS Church preceding the vote turned it into a unanimous vote.

Some vocal anti-gay rights legislators had already threatened to override the ordinance if SLC passed it, but now that seems unlikely, and in fact, the legislature will now be under extreme pressure to pass a similar state wide statute.

The influence of the LDS Church is far reaching and could even have positive effects beyond state borders.  There are a significant number of Mormons in the state legislatures throughout the west, and a change of attitudes on their part can have influence with others and turn minorities into majorities quite quickly.

Even on the national level it will have influence. There are four Mormon senators, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, Utah’s two Republican senators Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, and  Mike Crapo of Idaho, and at least ten in the House of Representatives, (more…)

Following the extensive backlash after Proposition 8 in California, the LDS Church, through its Apostle Dallin Oaks, has gone to its roots to gain public support—victimization. It won’t work.

It’s pretty obvious that violence, including vandalism, is not condoned by either side of the gay rights issue, and it is appropriate to single out any such instances and seek appropriate prosecution of violations.

That said, the whining of the LDS Church and its attempt to turn itself into a victim because of some scattered and isolated vandalisms is a rather pathetic scene. It’s like the bully on the block running for cover when some of his victims surprise him by getting up from their beating and fight back.

Our landscape is strewn with the broken lives of thousands of gays humiliated at the hands of the pulpit and its repulsive message that has condoned the real vandalism of homophobia, including Matthew Shephard, Harvey Milk, and our suffering gay children who are bullied and abused physically, mentally, and spiritually in our public schools, who are homeless because of rejection, many of whom are driven to suicides, and some of them occurring on the chapel doorsteps; and still the false prophets disavow their carnage.

The vandalism of homophobia doesn’t scar buildings, it scars souls, of both the giver and the receiver.

Let’s not let the churches change the fundamental nature of this problem. Gays are the victims and churches and their old-age dogmas born in mythology are the perpetrators. Without the all knowing, cocksure self-righteousness of religious people who insist on condemning, berating, marginalizing, ostracizing, and discriminating against gays there would be no problem. Most of the rest of the world has adopted a ‘live and let live’ attitude. Let’s not let a few scattered, isolated instances of resistance create a new victim.

Oppressors should expect resistance and the oppressed should resist. The resistance against all churches and their members who diminish the rights of gays should increase not decrease.

The resistance should have the goal of stripping the churches of their deceitful message and its illusions of righteousness. Their message is not the Golden Rule, but its antithesis. It is not a message of Love Thy Neighbor, but the opposite. It is not pro-family, but virulently anti-family. Focusing on that simple truth is the greatest strength of the gay movement. The gay movement is teaching the world true religion.

Let’s remember that it is not just Mormons, but Catholics, Muslims, some Baptists, and many other religions who have wielded the sword of oppression against gays. In Utah gay rights activists are targeting the Mormons because they are their closest, most visible, and most active foe and gay rights advocates have a responsibility to fairness and justice to respond vigorously and appropriately.

We should push forward fervently, while proceeding with malice toward none, remembering that our oppressors are our own friends, our own brothers and sisters, and our own moms and dads. It is a new untraveled road for them. Let us understand where they are coming from, where they have been, and give them a chance to arrive. That day is coming. We are near. More and more newly discovered parents of gays, when faced with the difficult choice, are rejecting their church rather than their children. Every gay is part of a family, and an extended family, and those tentacles reach into every home in the world. It’s an Oxymormon for a church to think it can be pro-family and anti-gay at the same time. Anti-gay churches cannot survive this tsunami of understanding that is sweeping the earth.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
And all the King’s horses,
And all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty
Together again!!

What better way to describe the current status of the health care system in America?

The Humpty Dumpty health insurance system in America is broken and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and yet this Congress seems to be waffling on fixing this mess. Single Payer has apparently been taken off the table and an ‘ethereal’ public option is being bandied about as a possible crumb to the masses who are demanding change.

We need to give up on Humpty Dumpty and start all over with a Single Payer system that covers everyone. We will eventually have it, but for now we seem content to put our finger in the dike while the water pours over the top, ala New Orleans.

Insurance groupings should not be determined by thousands of groups of varying sizes and rates with loopholes that exclude and deny coverage. Under Single Payer everyone in the nation would be considered one insurance group and because of its size it will  be more efficient, (more…)

Watts Cookin’ is a continuation of a column started in 1957 when Joe Watts became sports editor of The Herald Journal in Logan, Utah. Ray Nelson, Joe’s first editor, gave Joe’s column the Watts Cookin’ tag.

Here it is—2009—-52 years and thousands of columns later, and Joe is still writing Watts Cookin’—-this blog being its final resting place in the not to distant uncertain future.This blog will include columns, essays, and thoughts  from Joe and some of his friends and writers he admires. The topics will be wide ranging, including sports, humor, politics, religion, economics, ethics and morality. It is a work in progress and will morph wherever it goes. It will gradually include great writings of the past from the world’s best commentators, and will be a publishing place for new writers with conventional and unconventional viewpoints.

Opinion pieces will be sought from others, and all are welcome to submit essays for publication. Comments about the articles will be published, but there will be no anonymous and unapproved comments posted.

Readers can be assured that all comments will be civil and purposeful. High standards of journalism will be expected.