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…)

2012 State of the State Address

A Strong Economy Fosters Healthy Communities and Prosperous Families

Lt. Governor and Mrs. Bell; President Waddoups; Speaker Lockhart; members of the Utah Legislature; members of my Cabinet; Justices of the Utah Supreme Court; Utah’s First Lady, my beautiful wife, Jeanette; and my fellow Utahns:

It is an honor and a privilege to address you this evening. As we assemble in this beautiful and historic chamber, let us take time to acknowledge those who protect our freedoms and keep our homeland safe. This past August, I traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan to meet with some of our deployed Utah servicemen and women. It was a humbling experience. Our liberty – the free exercise of our God-given rights – is preserved by the men and women of our Armed Forces who willingly put themselves in harm’s way for God, family and country. This past year, in the span of just over a month, we lost six Utah soldiers, sailors and marines in Afghanistan. These brave servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of this nation and the ideals which make it great. We also acknowledge the loss of Agent Jared Francom, tragically killed in the Ogden shooting incident just a few short weeks ago.

Tonight, we have as honored guests in the gallery, family members of those we have lost at home and abroad. As they stand, please join with me to acknowledge them, and thank them for their loved one’s service and sacrifice.

As Governor of the great State of Utah, I am pleased to report that the state of our State is strong – and growing stronger. I want you to know I am very optimistic about Utah’s future. While our national economy continues to struggle, the economy in Utah surges ahead. Our unemployment rate continues to steadily fall. We currently have the second-fastest rate of job creation (more…)

To Sir, With Love

Huntsman’s gushing letters to leaders simply follow the super-sweet Utah style.

(This satire by our modern day Mark Twain appeared in The City Weekly, April 28, 2011. The mind from which it came is brilliant, irreverent, and should be embalmed and admired alongside the world’s greatest works of art, and when that should be done depends on whether you are continually amazed, amused, or angered.)

By D.P. Sorensen

The Huntsman campaign is moving swiftly to counter the barrage of bad publicity in the wake of the leaked “love letters” to President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton. Political observers across the nation were cringing at the gushing ick of the aforesaid missives, in which the ambassador to China and former Republican governor of Utah ladled vast quantities of worshipful syrup upon those two Democratic worthies (with slobbery verbal kisses smacked in the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton).

A few morsels from the Huntsman Jr. letters convey the calorie-laden epistolary meals delivered to messieurs Obama and Clinton. To Mr. Obama from Ambassador Huntsman: “You are a remarkable leader, and it has been a great honor getting to know you … I’m anticipating an extraordinary experience in Beijing.” To Mr. Clinton from Ambassador Huntsman: “I have enormous regard for your experience, sense of history and brilliant analysis of world events.”

Not content to perform a deep-tissue massage on Mr. Clinton’s well-upholstered ego, the ambassador proceeds to give a flirtatious squeeze to Mrs. Clinton’s delectable knee: Mrs. Clinton is “well-read, hard-working, personable, and has even more charisma than her husband! It’s an honor to work with her.”

Now, we Utahns are used to this style of over-the-top approbation. In fact, linguists have done detailed longitudinal studies cataloguing what they term Utah’s “hyperappreciative locutionary style.” The supreme maestro (more…)

The following letter written by Dave Coupal of Cottonwood Heights was published in The Salt Lake Tribune Public Forum Section, March 2, 2011.

by Dave Coupal, Cottonwood Heights

Those who engage in civil disobedience must be willing to pay the price and serve their time in jail (“Jury is set for DeChristopher trial,” Tribune, Feb 28). If convicted, perhaps Tim DeChristopher can share a cell with that other Utah agitator who disobeyed a law: state Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab. They both would surely benefit from a little time hearing from someone on the opposite side of the environmental issue.

I assume Noel will have a longer stay, since his illegal protest stunt of driving his all-terrain-vehicle up the restricted Wilderness Study Area of the Paria River did permanent damage to our publicly owned lands; whereas, DeChristopher just annoyed some energy producers.

By the way, when will the jury be set for the Noel trial?

Dave Coupal

By Dennis V. Dahle, John P. Livingstone and M. Gawain Wells

Published: February 25, 2011 07:38AM

In his recent guest column (“Anti-science views of faith leaders cause concerns,” Opinion, Feb. 8), R. Dennis Hansen correctly points out that religion and science need not be at odds, but in our view draws the wrong conclusion that they are at odds to begin with, or that religion is the problem.

Alert! Alert! There is so much drivel in this ‘thesis’ that it isn’t worthy of point-by-point rebuttal. These three authors are involved with what they call the Foundation for Attraction Research. It is a transparent fraud. Go to its web page and it is readily seen that it is a very small and tight knit group of pseudo scientists who begin with a predetermined belief and set out to prove their hunches right. The problem with their hunches is that they are all based on religious fables.

They are not seeking riches or gold or the praise of the world. They are seeking the adoration of their church apostles and their devout neighbors and friends. They are looking to get praised in church every Sunday morning. They particularly want to come to the defense of one of The Twelve, Boyd K. Packer, to try (more…)

By Matt Canham

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 18, 2011 07:13PM (Part of series on MLM)

Washington • For federal regulators, the idea seemed like a no-brainer.

People thinking of selling Avon, Utah-based Nu Skin or some other multilevel marketing (MLM) products should know how likely they are to make a profit. They should know about any lawsuits against the company and the number of independent sellers who ended up demanding a refund.

After years of study, the Federal Trade Commission in 2006 formally proposed a “business opportunity rule” to protect people from fraud by requiring such disclosures of MLMs, also known as direct sellers, along with companies pitching vending machine routes and letter-stuffing campaigns.

Then regulators asked the public to comment. And they did. First by the hundreds, then by the thousands, almost all of which were sent by direct selling companies or their distributors clamoring that the rule would hurt their home-to-home business, if not kill it all together.

Two years later the FTC dropped any reference to MLMs and forged ahead with its proposal. The commission expects to finalize the business opportunity rule sometime later this year.

So what happened? That depends on your vantage point.

The direct selling industry says it demonstrated that the proposal was unnecessarily onerous and persuaded federal regulators to back off.

The FTC’s staff say they decided the rule wouldn’t help consumers determine if a MLM was a good bet.

And then there’s a small group of critics who believes the FTC caved to political pressure from a questionable industry.

“It defies reason and the experience (more…)

Supplement makers seek scientific proof of claims
By Kirsten Stewart

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 21, 2011 10:02AM

Companies such as Tahitian Noni International, headliners of Utah’s booming nutritional supplement industry, built fortunes extolling the healing powers of juices made from exotic, tropical “super fruits.” Tahitian Noni champions the noni, XanGo touts the mangosteen, and MonaVie boasts the once-obscure, now wildly popular açai (AH-sigh-EE).

But after nutritionists questioned some of their health claims, manufacturers rejected the “super fruit” label.

They’re now rebranding their products as medicinal and pumping millions into research — not just test tube analyses of key ingredients, but randomized, placebo-controlled human trials on whole formulas.

“We don’t rely on third-party research. We study our own finished product. We want to know that it has benefits as consumed,” said Brett West, research director at Tahitian Noni in Orem.

In one company-funded study, the juice reduced biomarkers that indicate cancer risk in 120 heavy smokers. Another study suggested the juice can reduce high blood pressure in adults. Both were published in professional, peer-reviewed journals.

In 2009, XanGo in Lehi tested its juice on 122 overweight and obese adults. At a dose of 18 ounces per day — far higher than its label recommends — the juice reduced indicators of inflammation, which may contribute to heart disease and diabetes, the study’s authors found.

But experts say they’re a long way from scientific proof. And without more independent research, there’s a void for thirsty shoppers.

“Just claiming a fruit has antioxidants or bioindicators of inflammation doesn’t mean it has lasting effects,” said Wayne Askew, chairman (more…)

State of supplements: Elusive wealth, strong lure

By Steven Oberbeck

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 21, 2011 08:16PM (3rd in series)

Lured by the promise of wealth, thousands of Utahns every year become “distributors” of the pills, potions and lotions multilevel marketing companies in the state make.

Nearly all will fail, with their money flowing into the pockets of an elite few top-level distributors — men and women who typically get into the game early and make a fortune off those who try but fail to duplicate their successes.

“You hear of people making a fortune in multilevel marketing. You also hear of people who made a fortune playing the lottery. Neither one is a good way to try to make a living,” said Jon Taylor of Kaysville, an industry critic and author of The Network Marketing Game.

Multilevel marketing companies, also known as network marketing companies, operate pyramid-like sales structures made up of multiple levels of independent distributors who earn commissions by selling products. The problem is, the products usually are expensive — $30 or more wholesale for less than a quart of fruit juice, for example. Marking them up even more for sale to the public doesn’t produce a lot of retail sales.

Instead, the distributors are the customers. They rely on getting a piece of the sales from new distributors they recruit — and on down the line. For the thousands at the bottom, though, it is nearly impossible (more…)

by Josh Kosman

The New York Post

Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been out on the pre-campaign trail this month saying he is the man to get Americans back to work, despite a spotty jobs record while on Wall Street.

However, the former private equity firm chief’s fortune — which has funded his political ambitions from the Massachusetts statehouse to his unsuccessful run for the White House in 2008 — was made on the backs of companies that ultimately collapsed, putting thousands of ordinary Americans out on the street. That truth if it becomes widely known could become costly to Romney, who, while making the media rounds recently, told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work,” implying he was that person.

Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts.

Romney in 2007 told the New York Times he had nothing to do with taking dividends from two companies that later went bankrupt, and that one should not take a distribution from a business that put the company at risk.

Yet Geoffrey Rehnert, who helped start Bain Capital and is now co-CEO of the private equity firm The Audax Group, told me for my Penguin book, “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy,” that Romney owned a controlling stake in Bain Capital between approximately 1992 and 2001. The firm under his watch took such risks, time and time again.

Bain and Goldman Sachs, for example, put $85 million down in a $415 million 1994 leveraged buyout of Baxter International’s medical testing (more…)

Published: February 20, 2011 11:45PM

The Utah Legislature has a history of starving public schools and then criticizing them for failures. Bills in the current session would label struggling schools with D or F grades but offer no resources to help them improve and would funnel scarce public funds to private online schools.

Thus, legislators continue to encourage parents to abandon traditional public schools for private or charter schools. Obviously, despite the resounding defeat in 2007 of a voucher law that would have sent public money to private schools, the Legislature has not given up that battle.

In Senate Bill 65, Sen. Howard Stephenson would set up a statewide online education program that would direct taxpayer money to private providers of online courses. It has passed the Senate.

Sen. Wayne L. Niederhauser and Rep. Greg Hughes are sponsoring a bill to have public schools graded, based on statewide assessments, and for high schools, the graduation rate. They are modeling this legislation on a similar program in Florida. It would provide parents with information to justify abandoning those schools.

That is the Republican agenda–do away with government! And the biggest part of local government is public education! And it has been systematically dismantled by the Republican legislature (more…)

By Paul Beebe

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 19, 2011 10:53PM

Harris Simmons doesn’t want to express an opinion about the $8 million civil fine federal regulators recently levied against Zions Bank for serious deficiencies in its Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering controls.

But there are a few things that Simmons, chairman of parent company Zions Bancorp, wants shareholders and customers of the biggest home-grown financial institution in Utah to know.

Zions takes its obligation to comply with federal banking laws seriously, Simmons said in an interview.

He also wants to say that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network didn’t find evidence of any illegal money transfers, only that there were lapses in Zion’s compliance.

“We spend millions a year, [and] we have at last count 90 people working full time on this kind of compliance. They are monitoring about half a billion transactions year worth about $8 trillion,” he said.

Like other financial institutions, Zions is required to report suspicious money transactions to the government within 30 days. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department agency that fights money laundering, said Zions failed to file on time 132 reports representing $12.3 billion in suspicious activity (more…)

By Tom Harvey

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 20, 2011 12:05AM

(First in a three-part series on multi-level marketing firms in Utah. Once again we can count on the Tribune to tackle the important issues of the day. This will be a great service to Utahns who are quite conflicted about the business models of multi-level companies.)

MonaVie CEO Dallin Larsen took the stage in Orlando, Fla., last month and got to work.

He extolled riches to be earned. He shed tears over a little girl’s cancer. He evangelized about his company’s exotic fruit juice.

MonaVie, Larsen said, is building toward $20 billion in annual sales of its products based on a berry from the Amazon jungle.

His audience of independent distributors responded with episodes of wild cheers.

Attending conferences such as the Orlando event in January and one coming in June in Salt Lake City is like “going to church, going to temple,” Larsen said. He exhorted the distributors to put in 10,000 hours building their own independent businesses by recruiting others into their networks, saying, “No longer can you make an excuse. It’s up to you.”

“We’re locked and loaded,” he told the crowd. “We’re ready for the next 100 millionaires.”

To outsiders, events such as this have all the feel of a cult, the true believers cheering as men and women dangle promises of wealth, spiritual well-being, personal health, family togetherness and happiness through the medium of fruit juice.

Cultish though it may seem, the marketing of nutritional products through networks of independent distributors is big business, and perhaps nowhere more so than in Utah, notwithstanding fervent criticism of some of its practices.

“This is the hub of direct selling in America,” said Aaron Garrity, CEO of XanGo, the colorful Lehi company (more…)

By Peggy Fletcher Stack

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 18, 2011 10:49PM

The founder and charismatic Buddhist teacher at Salt Lake City’s Kanzeon Zen Center has stepped away after acknowledging a sexual affair with an advanced Zen follower.

Dennis Merzel, known by his Buddhist name and honorific title “Genpo Roshi,” is a nationally respected Zen master who leads trainings all over the world.

He first acknowledged the affair in late January to hundreds of students in Holland. Shortly after his return to Salt Lake City, Merzel addressed an open meeting at the center, took responsibility for his actions and apologized for “the pain, anger, concerns, questions and feelings of his wife, family and sangha members,” according to a statement on the center’s website.

Merzel voluntarily “disrobed” as a Zen priest and also resigned as an elder in the White Plum Asanga, a consortium of Zen centers led by students of Taizan Maezumi.

Merzel was on retreat Friday and not available for comment. But he did post an apology on his own website, http://bigmind.org/Responsibility.html.

“My behavior was not in alignment with the Buddhist precepts. I feel ‘disrobing’ is just a small part of an appropriate response,” Merzel wrote. “Experiencing all the pain and suffering I have caused has touched my heart and been the greatest teacher.”

Since then, Merzel’s actions have been discussed and dissected (more…)

Below is the pathetic offering provided as a supposed news story by The Deseret News regarding the charges and fines of $8 million against Zions Bank for ‘money laundering.’ The story came two days after the public announcement of the fines by two government agencies and a front page major headline and detailed story in the Salt Lake Tribune.

The close ties to Zions Bank by both the LDS Church and The Deseret News are well known, and for the sake of journalistic integrity one would think that the Deseret News would have made a better effort to cover the issue objectively. But NO, it tried to hide it and tried to downplay it, and in the process showed that the new ‘corporatized’ de-journalized Deseret News is apparently going to rely on ‘faith-based’ reporting out of the same mold the church deals with its own history.

(The extensive reporting of the case by the Salt Lake Tribune is posted elsewhere on this blog.)

The Deseret News Headline

Zions Bank fined $8M in lax wire transfers case
By Chi-chi Zhang
Associated Press

Published: Monday, Feb. 14, 2011 3:57 p.m. MST
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah-based Zions Bank has agreed to pay $8 million to settle allegations it failed to monitor billions of dollars’ worth of illegal wire transfers.

The federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Monday the violations occurred in 2006 and 2007, when the bank opened a new wire transfer business but failed to meet anti-money laundering regulations.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network cooperated in the investigation. It says Zions failed to report 132 cases of suspicious activity worth about $12.3 billion in transactions that it says may have involved drug trafficking accounts.

Zions hasn’t acknowledged or denied the allegations.

The bank has offices in 10 Western U.S. states. It closed its foreign correspondent banking business in 2008 and has agreed to pay an $8 million lump sum penalty fee.

That’s all folks. We got five paragraphs from the Deseret News downplaying the potential laundering of $12.3 billion dollars. Because of rules and regulations regarding banking and because a couple of federal agencies actually performed their public duty we now know that Zions Bank was involved in at least 132 transactions (potential money laundering) in amounts that totalled $12.3 billion dollars.

What the public still doesn’t know, and good journalism should pursue it, is who sent what to whom and for what purpose? These numbers are so big that most of us don’t take the time to do the math. We just know it’s a helluva lot of money. Also, the public may be able to put together the pieces a lot better than a few regulators who don’t understand the connections between names and entities. Names please! Who are these guys?

Let’s do the math—132 transactions totalling $12.3 billion amounts to nearly $100,000,000 each transaction. Now, this isn’t small (more…)

This column by Pulitizer Prize winner Leonard Pitts is one of our all time favorites. Mitt Romney was the justifiable target of Pitts’ laser sharp comments. This was written several years ago, but is worth reprinting again today in view of Romney’s double-speak at the recent CPAC convention. The lies and deliberate manipulations by two-faced Republicans to please their ideologically, radical, almost totally unthinking base stands reason on its head—and nobody has ever put it any clearer than Leonard Pitts.

“We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals.”

— Mitt Romney, Sept. 3

And then the gorilla run knee-socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn’t we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney’s? If he’s allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he’s spoken intelligently, why can’t I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can’t I?

I mean, baffle grab on the freak flake. Really.

And again, ahem.

If you’re a regular here, you’ve heard me rant from time to time about intellectual dishonesty. By this, I mean more than just your garden-variety lie. No, to be intellectually dishonest means to argue that which you know to be untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect to the degree that you’ll do violence to language and logic rather than cross the party line. (more…)

By Paul Beebe

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 12, 2011 09:15AM

Two federal agencies have slapped Zions Bank with multimillion-dollar civil penalties for failing to monitor suspicious wire transfers of billions of dollars related to transactions that may have involved drug trafficking and other crimes.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday said it imposed an $8 million penalty against Zions for shortcomings in its anti-money laundering controls — violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and the USA Patriot Act.

Oh these damnable regulations! They are such a nuisance. How can we hide money laundering if we have to be regulated? Well, maybe the regulators will be asleep at the switch. Maybe the regulators will be understaffed and not get around to us. Maybe our political contributions will keep us out of jail! Maybe our white shirts and ties and memberships in all the right clubs and churches will throw them off the track! This is our business and it is none of their business. Why do we have to put up with these intrusions of government? Don’t they know our God is Laissez Faire and (more…)

By Brian Moench

Opinion Piece in Salt Lake Tribune

Published: January 8, 2011 01:01AM

In December 1952, an episode of London smog killed more than 12,000 people in less than a month, most within the first four days. It changed forever how the world regarded air pollution. As thick winter smog once again smothers the Wasatch Front, a review of research published in 2010 should be the next milestone in how Utahns regard air pollution.

In May, the American Heart Association published the AHA’s Updated Scientific Statement on Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease. Based on hundreds of research papers, it suggested a formula for calculating the number of premature deaths in a community based on the concentrations of PM2.5 (particles smaller than 2.5 microns).

This formula produces the same conclusions that the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment have been stating since 2007. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people in Utah die prematurely every year because of our air pollution.

In 2010, numerous studies added Alzheimer’s, autism, diabetes and breast cancer to an already long list of health consequences that showed significant increases with air pollution. The exclamation point to all this research came with a remarkable study published (more…)

By Paul Beebe

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: January 14, 2011 07:56PM

The leaders of Utah’s two largest newspapers on Friday staked out strikingly different views of where their publications are going as more readers migrate to online sources for news and advertising revenue remains weak.

On one side, the Deseret News increasingly is practicing “values-based” journalism written by fewer reporters and charted out by academics and businesspeople who came late to news-gathering and in many cases previously held top positions at online and technology companies. The paper is looking ahead to a time when it ceases to publish a print edition.

The Huffington Post was purchased by AOL for $315 million. In just six years Arianna Huffington turned a blog into an online newspaper and it made money last year for the first time on revenue of $30 million. Meanwhile, the value of the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune has been slipping.

Is there room for a hard copy daily newspaper in the tech era? Time will tell.  We wish them both well. Newspapers are the foundation of a community, a state, and the nation.

“Whether it’s 10 years or 15 years, I don’t know. But at some point the printed newspaper is going to die,” said Mark Willes, who heads Deseret Management Co., the for-profit arm of the Mormon Church, which owns the News.

Willes and Nancy Conway, The Salt Lake Tribune’s top editor, spoke at length and answered questions at a legislative policy summit held in advance of the start of the 2011 legislative session on Jan. 24.

The Tribune places greater faith in the staying power of traditional print newspapers. Utah’s largest daily paper guards its (more…)

Politicians need to stay out of athletics

By Doug Robinson

Deseret News

Published: Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011 12:49 a.m. MST

Memo to state legislators: Butt out.

Stay out of high school sports.

Find something else to meddle with.

Oh, wait, we’re supposed to tone down the rhetoric.

Butt out … pa-lease.

Remember the little drama that began last summer when the state Legislature, led by Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, wanted to turn the high school transfer rule on its head by having NO RULES WHATSOEVER? A kid could transfer anytime, anywhere. He could play three different sports for three different schools in one school year.

That was a doozie, wasn’t it? Which is why legislators went back to work on the bill and modified it. The hope was that common sense would prevail, and they’d forget the whole business when (more…)

Published: February 7, 2011 12:15AM

There’s a modern analogy to the old proverb “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” It’s paying your Visa bill with your Mastercard.

No matter what idiom you use, moving money around is not the same as increasing the amount in the pot. But Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, and Rep. Merlynn Newbold, R-South Jordan, convinced the Legislature to do just that. And then to claim they have provided the new money needed to educate an expected influx of more than 14,000 new students in Utah schools next year. That’s pure baloney.

It’s not like the Tribune to call ‘baloney’ on Senator Lyle Hillyard. He is the best the hill has got on state budgeting and financial matters. However, it appears that nothing has been done to fund the increase in students and the status quo isn’t good enough let alone continue to fall farther behind.

The base budget for education passed by the Legislature last week would take $76 million from one education-fund pot, called the flexible allocation WPU (weighted pupil unit) distribution, and use it to fund enrollment growth. The problem with that is that the flexible allocation distribution is money Utah schools are already allotted and are using to help pay for mandatory retirement and Social Security costs.

If the flexible allocation distribution is used to hire teachers or buy supplies for the thousands of new students, then school districts will have to cut their budgets for such programs and services as reading, remedial assistance, busing and school nurses in order to make up the difference.

Sen. Karen Morgan, D-Cottonwood Heights, calls the maneuver “smoke and mirrors,” and we agree with her. To claim (more…)