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 to stay in office.

Perhaps a tip of the hat to the feds for all those jobs would have been appropriate instead of a snarly stay out of the way attitude.

Then there was the help the feds sent us so that we could keep our balance sheet in A1 shape and still provide funds for teachers and other state employees who otherwise would have been given pink slips. Perhaps a tip of the hat to the feds would have been appropriate.

Then there was your zeal for clean air, and I personally appreciate your expressed commitment to that goal, but again a tip of the hat to the feds would have been nice. Without them we would be in a dark cloud every day, and our stiff-necked opposition to their regulations ought to be an embarrassment, and our brazen corporate polluters remain criticism free in your remarks.

What single issue unifies Utahns more than any other? When jobs at Hill Air Force Base are at risk! Suddenly everyone comes together! And why?  Because government jobs are our bread and butter. The feds are damned if they cut the budget and damned if they don’t.

And, yes, your congratulatory remarks about our armed forces were appropriate, and that was another place where you could have given a tip of the hat to the feds, and you could have even gone the extra mile and thanked the feds for taking out Osama bin Laden for helping to clear the way for our young men to come home.

Oh, yes, it would be nice if we could truly put aside politics and be forever honest with one another and appreciative of one another, for we are all in this together. Remember, we are part of the United States of America, that great country that some refer to disrespectfully when it suits their purpose, as ‘The Feds,’ as if the feds are not part of the United States of America.

And yes, I am grateful that we have not yet declared our intent to secede.

Best wishes for continued success. I admire your lifetime of unselfish public service and think you are doing a good job, and I realize, sadly, that the party base must have some red meat from time to time and there are certain rituals to which a politician must pay homage. I don’t hold that against you.

Respectfully,

Joe Watts

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 in the nation. Every sector in our economy is growing again, except one. And I’m proud to say the sector that is not growing is state government.

Utah’s success is not only consistently recognized, it is increasingly praised by those outside our borders. Now, some people have said I talk about our rankings a little too much – and it may be a fair observation. But I hope you are as proud of Utah as I am. We have a great state, we have a great message and we are making great progress. I believe Utah’s Governor should be the State’s chief advocate and champion, and I am simply not going to stop touting Utah’s accomplishments.

I should point out that our accolades have less to do with “me” and everything to do with “we.” Indeed, they reflect the efforts of individuals here in this room and many others across the state. Some of our recent recognitions include being named the state with the best economic outlook and the most dynamic economy. And, for the second consecutive year, Utah has been named the best state for business by Forbes Magazine. These rankings speak to Utah’s economic strength. But this is not just about rankings; it is about economic recovery for the people of Utah. My focus is on growing the economy because I know a strong economy fosters healthy communities and prosperous families.

While recognition is nice, the underlying reasons for that recognition are what are most important. Forbes wrote: “No state can match the consistent performance of Utah. It is the only state that ranks among the top 15 states in each of the six main categories [on which] we rate the states.” Those six categories are economic climate, growth prospects, labor supply, business costs, regulatory environment and quality of life. Tonight, I will use the criteria of those economic experts to highlight Utah’s progress and our prospects. Let’s start with our current economic climate. In 2011, we added more than 36,000 jobs to our economy. Our unemployment rate has dropped from 7.5% to 6.0% today – a full 2.5% lower than the national average. Gross domestic product, personal income and business income continue to steadily rise. Utah still leads the nation in export growth. You might remember in last year’s State of the State, I challenged our business community to further increase our export growth – and they have responded with vigor. In 2011, we saw a 41% increase in exports, breaking records we set in 2009 and 2010.

Utah’s economic climate is healthy, but we must not relent in our efforts to improve. I recognize there are many people who are still hurting financially. I have met with many of you throughout the state. I want you to know, I am committed to working for all of you. There are, in fact, approximately 80,000 Utahns who are looking for work, and I will not rest – and I know that you in the Legislature will not rest – until every Utahn who wants a job can find a job.

My goal is to accelerate private sector job creation of 100,000 jobs in 1,000 days (www.utahjobsplan.com). I emphasize private sector, because it is the private sector – not government – that creates wealth, creates jobs and creates opportunities for Utah’s citizens. Government must create an environment where free enterprise can succeed and then get out of the way.

Let me give just one of many examples where business is thriving in Utah’s fertile field. Started 25 years ago in a garage, Lifetime Products now employs more than 1,300 people in Utah and was recently courted by many other domestic and international locations for a planned expansion. Ultimately, Lifetime determined that its home state of Utah was the best place to invest. This story is repeating itself hundreds of times across our state.

Utah’s steady job growth reaches far beyond the Wasatch Front. Last year, I visited 28 of Utah’s 29 counties – and don’t worry, Daggett County, I am headed your way soon! In my travels, I have been amazed at the creativity and ingenuity of our rural employers. For example, in the tiny town of Grouse Creek, I met Heather Warr, who is here with her family tonight. To supplement her family’s ranching income, Heather started an e-commerce business, selling western apparel and footwear online. Her company, standupranchers.com, now employs seven people – making Heather a major employer in a community of 100 residents. From fiber optic communications providers, to hay exporters, to composite manufacturers, to online retailers – people are finding unique opportunities and advantages in rural Utah. And Heather Warr exemplifies the innovation and initiative inherent in Utah’s people.

The second criterion is growth prospects. Utah is a fertile field in which to grow a new company, or to relocate or expand an existing company. This past September, I went to New York to meet with executives from L-3 Communications – a $16 billion high-technology company with locations in 30 states and 20 countries. The purpose of my visit was to convince them to expand their Utah operations. And, I’ve got to admit, it wasn’t much of a “hard sell.” L-3 told me they love doing business in Utah. In fact, their Salt Lake City unit is one of their most successful and fastest-growing divisions. Not by coincidence, last month, L-3 announced it would be concentrating its growth here in Utah, building new office space and hiring hundreds of new employees. In the past year, expansions and new jobs have been announced not only by L-3, but by other international companies like eBay, Boeing, Morgan Stanley, IM Flash, and Pepperidge Farms, just to name a few.

I’m delighted to say something that not many Governors can say: Our state is growing now, and as we look to the horizon, Utah’s growth prospects are truly bright. Anyone who understands the free market knows that there are few things that hinder growth more than onerous taxation. As I did last year, and the year before that, in order to sustain our successful economic recovery, I say to you today and to the people of Utah – no new taxes!

And, in fact, I want to go one step further. Due to our wise trust fund management – and our nation-leading record of helping people move from unemployment back into the workforce – Utah is in a position to reduce our unemployment insurance tax rates. I call upon you, the Legislature, to support Senate Bill 129, sponsored by Senator Curt Bramble and Representative Jeremy Peterson, to provide this timely tax cut to all of Utah’s 85,000 employers, and allow them to create more jobs and hire more people.

The third criterion is labor supply, or, more aptly put, a skilled and educated workforce. I have said before – Utah is the best state for business because we have the best people for business. Utah has natural advantages with our young, fast-growing, tech-savvy, highly-educated, bilingual and industrious workforce. Utah is also a proud right-to-work state, and we are going to keep it that way. In today’s global marketplace, educating and graduating job-ready students is an economic imperative.

With the help of Representative Mel Brown and Senator Lyle Hillyard, we have expanded early intervention programs for our at-risk students, programs empirically proven to help reach our critical goal of reading proficiency by the end of the third grade. We will soon introduce additional online college courses, providing another avenue for high school students to earn college credit before graduation. We are also expanding utahfutures.org, which provides students with online career counseling to ensure the education they receive today will get them a job tomorrow. My message to students is simple: “If you want a good job, get a good education.” Now, it is up to us – assembled here – to make sure they can!

My top legislative priority is to fund the growth and continued innovation in our education system. My budget calls for maintaining base funding and for $111 million in NEW money for our public schools, including a modest, but well-deserved, pay increase for our teachers. Post-secondary education is also increasingly becoming a necessity in today’s global marketplace, so I have set a goal that 66% of Utah adults will have a degree or professional certification by the year 2020. This is an ambitious goal, but an essential one – remember 66 by 2020! And working together, we will reach it!

The fourth criterion the economic experts considered is the cost of doing business, particularly the cost of energy. Because Utah’s electricity costs are an impressive 31 percent below the national average, we have a major competitive advantage over other states. In order to protect that advantage for the future, we must secure Utah’s supply of stable, low-cost energy, and we must do it now.

With Utah’s first 10-Year Strategic Energy Plan that I put in place last year, we are creating the framework to secure our energy independence. My administration is aggressively promoting responsible energy development in Utah. We have demonstrated, in the Uintah Basin and elsewhere, that developing our energy resources and being good stewrds of the environment are not mutually exclusive propositions. One of the major challenges for energy development is that many of Utah’s natural resources must be extracted from federally-managed public lands. While we have made progress in persuading the federal government to site and permit oil and gas wells, there remain great challenges ahead. We cannot – and we will not – let the federal government halt responsible energy development in Utah.

And because we owe it to our children and their children, we must also innovate safer and cleaner ways to extract natural resources and utilize energy. As Governor, I am calling on the private sector and our major universities to lead out! Our goal is to create an “energy research triangle” that launches Utah into a new era of energy technology innovation! I firmly believe that all solutions and all opportunities must be based upon principles of free markets and free enterprise.

Therefore, we will partner with industry and caring citizens to tackle one of the greatest challenges we have with energy development in our state – the issue of air quality. We cannot control the weather, but neither can we ignore the human and economic consequences of poor air quality. I am taking the lead on this issue by building partnerships with Utah industries and households to set achievable and vital air quality goals. I will be announcing the details of my plan in the coming weeks. I can promise you this: The solutions to our unique Utah challenges with air quality will come from Utah. Together, we can all do something to improve Utah’s air.

The fifth category is state regulatory environment. Before they invest precious capital, entrepreneurs want a stable and predictable environment, and a responsible government. Utah boasts a long history of fiscally prudent governance. In contrast to the federal government, Utah has made the tough decisions to keep our fiscal house in order. We balance our budget and we save taxpayers millions every year by protecting our AAA credit rating. In addition, my budget proposal eliminates our remaining structural imbalance and calls for no additional borrowing. Those decisions provide the stable and steady environment the marketplace seeks and needs in order to thrive.

In my travels around the state, one of the most common concerns business owners share with me is the cost, complexity and uncertainty created by excessive government regulation. In last year’s State of the State address, you will remember I ordered a review of all of Utah’s business rules and regulations. It resulted in 368 proposed rule changes to improve Utah’s already laudable regulatory environment – and we will work with you, the Legislature, to modify or repeal those rules that no longer serve a compelling public interest. Now, frankly, the vast majority of regulations causing the most harm to Utah business come from Washington, D.C. – part of the regulatory colossus created by an overreaching, out-of-control, and out-of-touch federal government. I am firmly resolved to work with our Congressional delegation and my fellow Governors to tell the Washington bureaucrats to get out of the way of Utah’s economic recovery, and stop the senseless flow of onerous and misguided regulation from our nation’s capitol.

The last category by which Forbes judged Utah the best state for business is our quality of life. We are truly blessed to live in the Beehive State. Not only are we surrounded by unsurpassed natural beauty, we also enjoy the beauty of strong communities, strong families, and a culture of caring and service. Two months ago, a devastating wind storm tore through Davis and Weber counties leaving tons of debris and millions of dollars of damage in its wake. With a second storm threatening, local leaders were concerned debris could become airborne and cause even further damage. Tens of thousands of citizens sprang into action and fanned out across neighborhoods to assist in clean-up efforts. Volunteer crews accomplished in days what would have taken city and county crews months to do. It was a stunning and moving example of the spirit of volunteerism and love of neighbor which permeates Utah, and which contributes so greatly to Utah’s outstanding quality of life.

It is also an impressive example of another Utah trait – our self-sufficiency. In Utah, we do not expect others to solve our problems. As a sovereign state, we not only have an obligation to find Utah solutions to Utah problems, we have a right to do so. We will not capitulate to a federal government that refuses to be constrained by its proper and Constitutionally-limited role.

Whether fighting the federal government on ownership and control of our RS 2477 roads, restoring our mule deer population, defending multiple use of our public lands, ending the budget-busting drain of Medicaid, or challenging the constitutionality of mandatory nationalized healthcare in the Supreme Court, be assured that this Governor is firmly resolved to fortify our state as a bulwark against federal overreach. Last October, in a one-room schoolhouse in Grouse Creek, Utah, I met a young boy named Heston. He told me that he had been taking piano lessons for one year and two months, and that he was going to play something for me after we had lunch.

I asked Heston if he was named after Charlton Heston, the actor.

One of his classmates helpfully piped up and said, “No, he was named after the tractor.”

After lunch, Heston made his way to the piano. Frankly, I was expecting a simple diddy like “Chopsticks.” Instead, I got Beethoven-dynamic and intricate music emanating from an old upright piano in a town two hours from the nearest stop light.

After young Heston finished his piece, I asked one of his classmates, “Are you sure he’s only been playing for one year and two months?”

She assured me that was the case, adding, “He’s what they call a prodigy.”

And, by the way, this young prodigy will be playing for us in the Rotunda after my address.

Utah is a state full of gems like Heston. Gems that, when polished and made to sparkle through hard work and the desire to succeed, add brilliance to our landscape. In every corner of our state, Utah’s source of richness and strength is its people. I am optimistic about Utah’s future because I believe in Utah’s people. Utah’s best days still lie ahead because Utahns are willing to work hard to be the architects of our own destiny. Utah is leading the way and setting the example for the rest of the nation to follow. In the darkest days of the economic crisis, Utah stood true to the founding principles of our great nation, and we now see the fruits of our determination.

I have spoken tonight of some of my goals and plans for the state. Having these goals and plans is important, but frankly writing things down on paper is the easy part. Making it work – the implementation and the execution – is what counts. Hard work demands dedication, determination, and discipline. Everything I do as Governor is examined through the lens of whether it helps grow the economy and create opportunity for Utah’s citizens.

That continues to be my commitment to you. I will keep my eye on the ball, and I will fight for sound and correct principles of fiscal prudence, limited government, and individual liberty, coupled with personal responsibility. Whether preparing a household budget or a state budget, whether you are the Governor or a small business owner – and I have been both – the principles are the same. By adhering to sound principles now, we will build a bright future for tomorrow. Not only will Utah be the best state for business, we will continue to be a place where communities and families will thrive and prosper.

The State of our State is strong. I am committed to making it stronger. I am honored to serve as your Governor.

May God continue to bless you, our great nation, and the Great State of Utah.

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 (one might say exceedingly exalted maestro) of this style was, of course, the late prophet, seer and revelator Gordon B. Hinckley, who dispensed superlatives like a parade grandmaster scattering Tootsie Rolls to the candy-bag- clutching kiddies. “It is remarkable! It is marvelous! It is extraordinary!”

Our ecclesiastical betters and public servants alike have long availed themselves of the hyperappreciative locutionary style, as anyone who has attended award banquets, civic ceremonies and religious services can attest. We know that remarkable, extraordinary, splendid, marvelous, wonderful et al. are nothing more than verbal packing peanuts.

But the rest of the world is unenlightened and reacted to Huntsman Jr.’s love letters with a sustained squirm and a very loud yuck! The Huntsman campaign, knowing that explaining Utah’s adjectival addiction would be an exercise in futility, has decided to release other letters that demonstrate that the former governor is an equal-opportunity gusher.

“We hope these letters will return Ambassador Huntsman to the good graces of the Republican faithful, a substantial portion of which has harbored doubts about our candidate’s political orientation,” said spokesman Jacob Pratt. “You’ll notice that compared to his fawning epistles to illustrious Republicans, his so-called love letters to Obama and Clinton come off as insignificant air kisses.”

The full texts of what are being called the Letters of Adoration can be found on the Huntsman campaign Website. What follows are excerpts from notes, cards, letters, text messages and Tweets from Mr. Huntsman to assorted Republican statesmen:

To Ronald Reagan,  August 1982: “Dear Mr. President: Who does your hair? My mom says you use a ton of Brylcreem, but I think your luxurious locks shine with natural oils. When I hear that velvety baritone of yours, every inch of my body tingles with total love! You are a remarkable leader!”

To George Bush, July 1992 or June 1993: “Dear Former First Son: I saw you throw out the first pitch for the Texas Rangers. What an arm! You are much better-looking than your dad or your pudgy brother. Plus,  you have a ton more charisma! I notice you have the same accent as Ross Perot and the actor Slim Pickens. I heard you interviewed by Dan Rather, and it’s clear as day that you have a stupendous intellect!” [Mr. Bush wrote back an angry letter to the young Huntsman, saying, “I is not dumb! How dare you call me stupendous!”

To Dick Cheney, April 2004: “Dear Mr. Vice President: I have come to the conclusion that you are simply the manliest vice president in the history of our republic. Your charm blows me away! That darling thing you do when you curl your upper lip reminds me of Elvis and I get all rubbery in my knees. In memory of the extraordinary Dick Nixon, I just want to say, you are a remarkable Dickhead!”

In the event the Letters of Adoration fail to restore Mr. Huntsman to Republican graces, his campaign is prepared to release his anonymous letters to Mit Romney, whom they suspect of leaking the Obama love letters. A random example: “Go f–k thyself, Mit, thou remarkable flip-flopping phony.”

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

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 to restore some dignity to his earthly  sojourn. This trio of lost souls is trying to find justification for the litany of sins their church has committed against gays.

These are scientists who believe that Joseph Smith saw God and that he was led to ancient Gold Plates and translated them into the Book of Mormon. They believe their church is the only true church in the world and that all the others are wrong. They believe that Three Nephites (Book of Mormon characters) are wandering the earth helping people until Christ returns, and that blacks were given a dark skin because they sinned in a pre-existent world. They believe in the superiority of males and that females should be submissive to their husbands. They believe the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any book ever published, but the ‘most corrected’ book would be closer to reality.

The ‘prophets’ that taught them this stuff also taught them that homosexuality was a sin, and for some unknown reason, this is the point they have decided to prove as true. Of all the problems with the truthfulness of their religion, this is the one they feel compelled to defend.

Go at it boys. When you get that burning in the bosom be very, very careful what it might mean.

We suggest that true religion and true science, when they are found, are never at odds. While such a hypothesis may seem implausible to some, we can find a glimmer of this universally hoped-for condition in, of all places, the debate over homosexuality. True religion teaches a love for all people, including those who identify themselves as gay. Some people who experience same-sex attraction, however, do not wish to practice homosexuality or adopt a gay identity. And fortunately for such people, hope can be found in both true science and true religion.

As to science, contrary to a source cited by Hansen that same-sex attractions are of purely biological origin, Dr. Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the current director of the National Institutes of Health, reached a very different conclusion. Collins, in addressing the etiology of homosexuality in his book, The Language of God, offers the conclusion that homosexuality is “genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.”

Interestingly, this scientific statement is remarkably similar to and supportive of Elder Boyd K. Packer’s recent statement

about homosexuality not being “preset.” Elder Packer, president of the LDS Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, also has a very long and well-documented history of teaching love for people with homosexual attractions. Contrary to media reports that sought to portray Elder Packer as intolerant and uninformed, he actually had the right religion and the right science, if people cared to look beyond the hype and headlines and consider his remarks in context.

Even the American Psychological Association, after a long period of supporting a purely biological view of the origin of homosexuality, recently adopted a position supported by Collins’ observations that homosexuality, like other traits, emerges from some combination of nature and nurture. As scientists would say, all human behavioral traits are polygenic and multifactorial. Janet Cummings eloquently summarized the evolution perspective on homosexuality: “The belief that homosexuality is always inbred flies in the face of available evidence that genetics, childhood environment, and personal choice are all factors. Granted, some may be more salient than others, but from a genetic standpoint alone, the genes responsible would have disappeared throughout the millennia from lack of reproductive activity.”

Collins offers the following additional insight on homosexuality: “There is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits. For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive. Environment, particularly childhood experiences, and the prominent role of individual free will choices have a profound effect on us. Scientists will discover an increasing level of molecular detail about the inherited factors that undergird our personalities, but that should not lead us to overestimate their quantitative contribution. Yes we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us.”

Other reputable scientists, some of whom personally support gay rights, have concluded that homosexuality is not invariably fixed in all people, including Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist who is credited by some for spearheading the effort to remove homosexuality from the psychiatric manual.

Spitzer offers the following: “Like most psychiatrists, I thought that homosexual behavior could only be resisted, and that no one could change their [sic] sexual orientation. I now believe that to be false. Some people can and do change.”

It should also be observed that the type, degree, and potential for change vary with each individual, and many debates about change could be avoided by a more nuanced discussion about it.

Unfortunately, the dialogue about homosexuality has too often been reduced to a simplistic and divisive us-versus-them, religion-versus-science debate. When we bring true science and true religion together, however, they can and should unite us.

Dennis V. Dahle, John P. Livingstone and M. Gawain Wells are board members of the Foundation for Attraction Research. Dahle is a a Salt Lake City attorney and a FAR founder. Livingstone is an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine in Religious Education at Brigham Young University. Wells is a retired professor of psychology at BYU.

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© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune

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 of millions of people to take the most common form of business-opportunity solicitation and exclude it,” said Robert FitzPatrick, president of Pyramid Scheme Alert, based in Charlotte, N.C. “This rule was snuffed out with a political lobbying campaign.”

That campaign was waged largely by the Direct Selling Association (DSA), which counts 16 Utah businesses as members. And the group doesn’t hide that it helped direct most of the 17,000 comments the FTC received.

“We certainly facilitated those communications. I’m not abashed about that at all,” said Joseph Mariano, the incoming president of the DSA. “We felt that the regulatory burdens they were going to place on legitimate businesses in an effort to weed out the scams were just too high.”

The drawn-out debate over the business opportunity rule shows how aggressive direct sellers respond to regulations they find threatening, but also how the government has struggled to fashion rules for an industry that regulators regard skeptically.

Such regulatory dust-ups are of particular interest for Utah, which has more MLM companies per capita than anywhere else in the nation. Companies like Nu Skin, USANA and XanGo employ thousands and rack up annual revenues of $4 billion. They also enjoy the support of Utah’s political elite. Sen. Orrin Hatch, Reps. Jim Matheson and Rob Bishop and former Rep. Chris Cannon sent letters to the FTC questioning the business opportunity rule and how it applies to direct sellers.

The thousands of comments, including those from Utah political leaders, almost exclusively focused on three areas: a seven-day waiting period to sign up, the financial and legal disclosures and a required list of references.

The companies felt a weeklong waiting period would zap the excitement of potential distributors, making it harder to recruit new people into their sales force. They also felt the earnings and lawsuit disclosures would make it look like the company was sketchy.

“There is sort of a feeling like ‘Why do you have to do this? Have you done something wrong?’” said James Bramble, general counsel for USANA Health Sciences, based in Salt Lake City.

As for the list of references, their complaints covered both privacy concerns and issues unique to the MLM world.

Distributors get more money when they add new distributors to their “downline,” so encouraging someone to call independent sellers to check on the validity of the business could start a recruitment war.

“We were ultimately able to persuade the FTC that the direct sellers should not be covered,” said Nu Skin General Counsel Rich Hartvigsen. “There are several million independent direct sellers in the United States. When they get involved in an issue that impacts their business, they have a fairly loud voice.”

Monica Vaca of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said the 17,000 comments were far more than the commission normally receives on a proposed rule, but she didn’t believe the industry arguments resulted in the policy change.

“At its core what the business opportunity rule does is provide prospective purchasers with disclosures. Things we think are important for people to know before they invest money,” said Vaca. “Some of those disclosures are going to be more difficult to apply in the MLM context.”

She said the big one is the earnings disclosure. According to Vaca, MLM companies and even their distributors have an incentive to exaggerate annual earnings, making it easier to recruit others into the business.

“If they are engaged in some kind of collusion to inflate these earnings, then the earnings disclosure is not going to be really that useful,” she said.

Vaca did agree that providing references to other MLM distributors could be counterproductive.

“If they have an incentive to recruit you into their downline, then you don’t have somebody who is necessarily giving you the full, honest picture,” she said.

Beyond the details of the regulation, Vaca said the commission had a change in heart through the rule-making process.

“Initially, we felt like there was really quite a lot of evidence there, that there are some bad practices in this industry. However, identifying bad practices of 14 companies is a little bit different than identifying that as a prevalent problem affecting the entire industry,” she said, referring to past FTC lawsuits against 14 direct selling companies, none of which was from Utah.

The FTC decided that it would continue its case-by-case approach to rooting out the bad companies from the legitimate ones, focusing on how much of the money is made by recruiting others rather than selling products.

FitzPatrick, the vocal MLM critic, called that “absurd.”

“The original rule was not to prove that each scheme was a fraud,” he said. “The point of the rule was to provide disclosure so the consumer could know if it was a viable business opportunity.”

He said the biggest need is for more information on potential earnings, because he said people envision making big money selling the products and recruiting other distributors, but the overwhelming majority makes little or no money at all. He thinks the FTC should have tried to tweak the disclosure, not jettison it entirely.

FitzPatrick also lamented the political involvement in the rule making, including a direct selling company in Georgia that hired past FTC Chairman Timothy Muris and former Consumer Protection Bureau Director Howard Beales to argue on its behalf.

Vaca rebuffed the claim that the FTC caved to industry pressure, saying: “I think our report really stands on its own. We talk about all the reasons why it was not a good fit.”

But she also promised that the FTC would keep a vigilant eye on direct sellers.

“We are going to be active in the MLM world for a long time,” she said. “The two main issues are the potential for a possible pyramid scheme, and the making of false or unsubstantiated earnings claims.”

mcanham@sltrib.com

Business opportunities

The FTC’s proposal was a play off the already established franchise rule, which requires chains to provide lengthy disclosures to a prospective buyer. This time, the FTC wanted to target much less expensive ventures such as at-home work companies and multilevel marketing.

Disclosures required

Any earnings claim made by the company

A list of lawsuits concerning fraud or deceptive practices

Description of any refund policy

The number of purchasers in the past two years and the number who sought a refund

A list of references, usually the 10 geographically closest to the new recruit

—————————————————-

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 of the University of Utah’s nutrition department.

Scientific rigor demands that the studies be replicated many times.

“But how many researchers are interested in exploring noni? It’s not like an anti-cancer drug with several investigators working on it,” said Askew. “These studies may benefit [juice makers] without advancing science much.”

—

Antioxidant ability • The Food and Drug Administration bars manufacturers from claiming foods cure disease.

Noni, a lumpy yellowish-green fruit from a plant used in traditional healing throughout Polynesia, is instead promoted for improving endurance, boosting immune function and supporting healthy hearts, skin and joints. Similar boasts have been made for mangosteen, a fruit with a thick purple rind and sweet white pulp grown primarily in Southeast Asia. Açai, a purple berry from Brazilian forests, reportedly helps reduce inflammation and has found its way into weight-loss drinks and anti-aging creams.

Juice makers built these claims on the promise that their products are packed with antioxidants, which neutralize the free radicals (oxidizing molecules in cells) that cause aging and age-related disease.

Some studies support that. But in 2008, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found açai to be a middling source of antioxidants, ranking behind red wine, pomegranate and store-bought grape, blueberry and black-cherry juices.

And in 2007, Choice, a publication by the Australian Consumers Association, found a common apple beat the antioxidant potency of juices containing açai, mangosteen, noni and the goji berry.

“It makes more sense, it’s more economical, to buy an orange or apple than to spend a lot of money on an exotic new fruit that may or may not be better for you,” said David Schardt, senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C.

A 25-ounce bottle of MonaVie Essential retails for more than $30, or $4.60 per the daily recommended 4 ounces. Since it’s a proprietary juice blend, there’s no telling how much açai you’re paying for.

POM Wonderful in California spent months and lots of money developing a chemical analysis of pomegranate juice, so their product could be compared to rip-offs.

No such test exists for açai, which is now found in mainstream drinks by Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch. MonaVie has patented its freeze-dried açai powder.

“Unlike with many herbs and vitamins, there’s no defined quality standard for açai. You can’t say one product is more authentic than the other,” said Todd Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, which tests supplements for manufacturers seeking its seal of approval.

—

‘One more thing you can do’ • Nutritionists, meanwhile, have grown skeptical of dueling antioxidant claims, saying the recommended daily intake is easily met by eating fruits and nuts and cautioning that too much may be counterproductive.

Antioxidants are complicated, explains Alexander Schauss, senior director at Aibmr Life Sciences, a nutraceutical research firm in Puyallup, Wash. The oxidation of free radicals has important benefits, such as helping the body convert fat to energy, attack bacteria and recover from exercise and injury.

Some antioxidants are absorbed well; others not at all. Their relative importance and their interactions are issues scientists struggle to understand — and juice makers are working to add to the literature.

Schauss, a member of MonaVie’s scientific advisory board, found in a 2008 study that the juice demonstrated “significant antioxidant protection” in 12 healthy adults. It protected against the oxidation of low-density lipoproteins, LDL or bad cholesterol, which contributes to the development of the fatty buildup in the arteries and heart disease.

But Schauss looked at the immediate effects of consuming MonaVie — not on whether it has any health outcomes.

Açai is still a virtual unknown in the scientific world. Schauss’ study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry is one of about 72 published on the berry, compared with more than 45,000 on vitamin C and 32,000 on vitamin E. Far more is known about these supplements, and even they have yet to be embraced by groups like the American Heart Association, which recommends a healthy diet instead.

But supplement makers point out that many Americans don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables.

“XanGo is not better or worse than taking vitamin C or E. It’s yet one more thing you can do,” said Shawn Talbott, the company’s scientific adviser.

The industry is now promoting other compounds found in their products, such as phytochemicals, which some lab studies have suggested may help prevent cancer.

“Most super fruits are no better for you than apples, oranges and bananas. They just cost you a lot more,” admits a promotional video on Tahitian Noni’s website. “But noni is different because it’s teeming with what researchers call bioactives, chemical compounds that can actually improve your health.”

Jeff Graham, a senior vice president at MonaVie, acknowledged research on exotic fruits is not fully developed.

But, he notes, MonaVie has funded 11 peer-reviewed studies since its founding in 2005. “You have to have capital to do that. Five or six years ago we couldn’t pronounce açai. Now 50-plus food and drink products leverage its power.”

kstewart@sltrib.com

The truth behind noni

The National Institute of Health is funding a clinical study of dried noni fruit extract in cancer patients at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii. The first phase, published in abstract form only, found noni to be safe and well-tolerated by patients. Later phases will seek to ascertain any benefits.

XanGo Juice by XanGo Corp

Ingredients

Each 1 fl oz serving contains (32 g) of garcinia mangostana (reconstituted juice from whole fruit) and apple, pear, grape, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, cranberry and cherry juice concentrates.

Price

$37 per bottle, or $100 for four bottles.

How it works

Marketers claim that the juice, made from the tropical fruit mangosteen, reduces inflammation and supports healthy respiratory and intestinal systems and joints. The mangosteen bark, leaf, root and rind traditionally have been used as remedies for diarrhea, dysentery, fever and skin conditions. Studies have shown the fruit to have some antioxidant, anti-histamine, anti-serotonin, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. But there is not enough reliable scientific evidence to support the juice’s purported therapeutic benefits.

Sources: Consumer Reports and ConsumerLab.com

MonaVie Essential by MonaVie LLC

Ingredients

Each 2 fl oz serving contains patented, freeze-dried açai powder and puree and a blend of 18 reconstituted fruit juices, including, grape, apple and pear.

Price

4 bottles for $120

How it works

People use acai, the fruit of the acai palm, for osteoarthritis, high cholesterol, erectile dysfunction (ED), weight loss and obesity, “detoxification,” and for improving general health. It exploded in popularity after being promoted as a “Superfood for Age-Defying Beauty” on the Oprah Winfrey show. Some studies suggest acai to be high in antioxidants, especially in products that contain the fruit pulp. Others show the fruit be a middling source. But there is not enough reliable scientific evidence to support the juice’s long-term therapeutic benefits.

Sources: Consumer Reports and ConsumerLab.com

Tahitian Noni Original by Tahitian Noni International

Ingredients

Each 1 fl oz serving contains (29.9 ml) of morinda citrifolia fruit nectar from pure noni puree and undisclosed amounts of grape and blueberry juice concentrate.

Price

4 bottles for $120 to $130

How it works

Traditionally, it was the leaves, and not the fruit, of the noni that were used medicinally as a poultice for wounds, skin infections and to promote lactation. Some distributors claim the juice stimulates the immune system and has proven effective in fighting AIDS, Epstein-Barr virus, cancer, lupus and kidney problems. It has also been promoted for increasing energy levels and promoting heart health. There is currently little scientific evidence to support these claims. But the National Institute of Health is funding a clinical study of dried noni fruit extract in cancer patients.

Sources: Consumer Reports and ConsumerLab.com

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©

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 to break even. But for those near the top, usually just a handful to several dozen people at each company, the money rolls in.

The top seven MonaVie distributors earn an average of $3.4 million a year. The top three distributors at XanGo earn an average of $1.3 million a year. Top-of-the-pyramid distributors at Usana earn an average of $857,865 annually, while Nu Skin’s top 115 or so “Blue Diamond” executives in the U.S. earn $535,276 a year on average.

Would-be entrepreneurs often can’t resist the lure of that kind of money. No matter how elusive the promise, they see an opportunity to work their way up to the elite earning level achieved by people such as Justin Prince.

Dressed in a neatly tailored suit and standing in front of a white board at XanGo’s headquarters last month in Lehi, Prince, a “premier” distributor, explained to a small group of new and potential distributors how they, too, could duplicate his success.

Premier XanGo distributors — who in terms of earnings are among the top one-quarter of 1 percent of the company’s sales force — make an average of $10,000 a month, although Prince said he makes more.

“You’ll want to use at least $200 of XanGo products a month, and in your first month connect three people, who also will buy $200 worth of product,” Prince said, writing those figures on the board. “At the end of your first month, you’ll make $180.”

The next month, he said, do the same thing while helping the three people initially connected bring in three more people each. “Your second month you’ll make $480. At that point you’re cash-flow positive.”

Do it for a third month. “At that point you have built a $9,480 a year business,” Prince said, explaining by duplicating that effort for another three months someone can make $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year.

But Prince, who joined XanGo three years ago, also tempered his remarks.

“Let’s say for the sake of argument this is way optimistic,” he said, gesturing toward the board. “Let’s say it is 75 percent unrealistic and three out of four people don’t do what they say they’re going to do. At the end of six months, you’ll still be making $40,000 a year.”

Such talk reveals an underlying truth about multilevel marketing companies, said Robert FitzPatrick, founder of the website, PyramidSchemeAlert.org. “They are just product-based pyramid schemes built upon an endless chain of recruitment.”

To support his argument, he pointed to the turnover rate of distributors.

The Direct Selling Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade group that represents many of the nation’s network marketing concerns, estimates the annual turnover among distributors is 56 percent. So statistically, at least, there’s a whole new corps of distributors every two years.

Rather than interpreting that as evidence companies are churning low-level distributors in order to keep the money flowing to top-level earners, the DSA offers a different explanation.

“People get involved in direct selling for many reasons,” said Amy Robinson, the DSA’s chief marketing officer. “Very often it is to fulfill a short-term goal, say buying a new refrigerator. They’ll get involved for a few months, reach their goal and drop out.”

Yet information from Utah’s top companies suggests even such a modest goal will be difficult for most to achieve.

Of MonaVie’s active distributors, 85 percent earned commission checks in 2009 averaging $35 a week or less. Of Nu Skin’s 76,246 distributors in the U.S. in 2009, 11,360 earned a commission check, and for a little more than half that number the average was $65 a month.

Distributors on XanGo’s two lowest earning levels, or nearly 73 percent of its active distributors, bring in an average of $122 a month or less. Usana reported that of its 165,710 associates, including those just starting out, the average yearly income was $617.

What isn’t disclosed are the often thousands of dollars in expenses distributors can incur trying to generate a commission, which might include time and the cost of purchasing promotional and sales-development materials from the companies or top distributors. “None of that comes without cost. These aren’t just pyramids based upon products, they’re also pyramids based upon time and effort,” Taylor said.

But Brian Douglas, a top level Usana “diamond director,” believes those who are committed can build a successful multilevel sales organization, just as he did after joining up with the company 14 years ago.

He offered his own explanation of why so few succeed.

“There is a high failure rate in any business,” he said. “The big problem we have is there is a very low cost to get involved. It is easy in, easy out. With low cost of entry, it is easy if things aren’t going great to throw up your hands and walk away. If you had a million bucks invested in a franchise, you would do everything you could.”

For FitzPatrick and Taylor, though, the deck is stacked against new distributors no matter how much time, effort and sincerity they bring to the table.

“If you have a company with 100,000 distributors and half leave every year, that means over five years 250,000 people who would have come and gone,” leaving their money behind, FitzPatrick said.

He conceded that the lure of direct marketing for many can be irresistible, especially during tough economic times.

“In one sense, network marketing companies do have a product that is in growing demand — the promise of a steady income. But at the end of the day, 99 percent of those involved lose money. It is an enormous flimflam on an almost incalculable scale.”

steve@sltrib.com

—

What top distributors earn

MonaVie • The top seven earn an average of $3.4 million a year.

Nu Skin • The top 115 or so “Blue Diamond” executives in the U.S. earn $535,276 a year on average.

Xango • The top three distributors earn an average of $1.3 million a year.

Usana • Top-of-the-pyramid distributors at earn an average of $857,865 annually.

—

What most distributors earn

Monavie • Of active distributors, 85 percent received commission checks in 2009 averaging $35 a week or less.

Nu Skin • Of 76,246 distributors in the U.S. in 2009, 11,360 people, or fewer than 15 percent, received a commission check, and for a little more than half that number, the average was $65 a month.

XanGo • Distributors on the two lowest earning levels, or nearly 73 percent of active distributors, bring in an average of $122 a month or less.

Usana • Of its 165,710 associates, the average yearly income was $617.

Source • Company disclosure statements.

What top distributors earn

MonaVie • The top seven earn an average of $3.4 million a year.

Nu Skin• The top 115 or so “Blue Diamond” executives in the U.S. earn $535,276 a year on average.

Xango • The top three distributors earn an average of $1.3 million a year.

Usana • Top-of-the-pyramid distributors earn an average of $857,865 annually.

What most distributors earn

Monavie • Of active distributors, 85 percent received commission checks in 2009 averaging $35 a week or less.

Nu Skin • Of 76,246 distributors in the U.S. in 2009, 11,357 people, or fewer than 15 percent, received a commission check, and for a little more than half that number, the average was $65 a month.

XanGo • Distributors on the two lowest earning levels, or nearly 73 percent of active distributors, bring in an average of $122 a month or less.

Usana • Of its 165,710 associates, the average yearly income was $617.

Source • Company disclosure statements.

—————

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 division (renamed Dade Behring), which sold machines and reagents to labs.

Former Dade CEO Scott Garrett, who managed the business for the first few years after the takeover, said Romney “was far more in tune with what was going on throughout his firm, and even the portfolio companies, than you might expect.”

Bain reduced Dade’s research and development spending to 6 to 7 percent of sales, while its peers allocated between 10 and 15 percent. Dade in June 1999 used the savings as part of the basis to borrow $421 million. Dade then turned around and used $365 million from the loan to buy shares from its owners, giving them a 4.3 times return on their investment.

A Dade executive, who requested anonymity, said he confronted new CEO Steven Barnes after a boardroom meeting within a week of the distribution.

“You really think it’s a good idea to borrow, you know, one times sales?” he asked.

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that’s fine,” Barnes responded. “You know companies do that all the time.”

The executive then told Barnes, “Well, that’d be like me going out and borrowing the amount of money I make in a year and then trying to pay it off and pay for my house and feed myself and everything else. That doesn’t make sense.” The executive said he let it drop after that.

In August 2002, Dade filed for bankruptcy.

This was not an isolated case.

* Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-’90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

* Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

* Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

* Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003.

Romney’s Bain invested 22 percent of the money it raised from 1987-95 in these five businesses, making a $578 million profit.

While I have not investigated all of Romney’s Bain investments and there may be cases where he made money and improved businesses, there’s little question he made a fortune from businesses he helped destroy.

Mitt Romney, through his spokesman, did not return calls. Bain declined comment.

Bain of his existence

Romney said:

He was not involved in decisions to take distributions from two Bain Capital businesses that later failed. New York Times, June 3, 2007

“People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work.”

Romney did:

Owned a controlling interest in Bain Capital when it took payments from five companies that later failed.

Made fortunes by bankrupting five profitable businesses that ended up firing thousands of workers.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/ad_mitt_mistakes_jRmd2LHaPIb0bbNn1ZkgaJ#ixzz1EeDPm38F

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 for the past two decades. If we keep electing them the demise of public education is inevitable. The for-profit scavengers are already groveling up the pieces, hawking their wares and wiles without any regulation. They make glorious offers and promises and leave their innocent, gullible students drowning in debt.

This might be useful, provided that, once these struggling schools are identified, they at least can plead their case for funding to implement remedial courses or in other ways improve. Florida, after all, offers financial incentives to schools. Florida also has a constitutional amendment limiting class sizes. In Utah teachers must deal with the largest class sizes in the nation.

Florida also spends nearly twice as much per student on education as Utah, which sits dead last in that category. If we’re looking at Florida as a model, let’s start with financial commitment.

Legislators know that Utahns are devoted to their neighborhood public schools, and so, during election campaigns, candidates proclaim they are pro-education. But what many of them mean is that they support education only as long as educators and school officials do as the Legislature demands.

Thus we get a proposed constitutional amendment to take the election of Utah State Board of Education members away from voters and put the board under control of the governor and state Senate. Then there are bills that dictate the smallest details of school curriculum, such as mandating that schools teach that the United States is a republic, not a democracy, and requiring “civic and character” education.

Legislators’ penchant for micro-managing education and undermining public schools is not the way to help Utah’s youth prepare for jobs and help Utah prepare for the future.

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© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune

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 during 2006 and 2007.

The implication of FinCEN’s claim surely annoys the banking company. It thinks the allegation unfairly implies that Zions transferred $12.3 billion in ill-gotten funds into the foreign accounts of shady characters.

“The billions of dollars reported, from our point of view, constitute the haystack, and not the needles that might be in it. If it was illegal activity, it wasn’t $12 billion. It would have been in the context of that volume of business,” Harris said.

It isn’t clear how egregious Zions lapses were. Officials from the OCC and FinCEN refused to talk in detail beyond the documents their agencies released earlier this month.

“Frankly, we are not in the business of beating people over their heads. We are here to help financial institutions identify where there is money laundering, or possible fraud,” FinCEN spokesman Bill Grassano said.

Even so, cases such as Zions’ aren’t common, he said. The largest fine FinCEN ever levied was against Wachovia Bank. In March 2010, the Wells Fargo subsidiary was ordered to pay $110 million after investigations by the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, FinCEN and the OCC.

The allegations against Zions appear to be an aberration, even though two other smaller fines were levied against units of the bank last August. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Zions Direct $225,000 for failing to disclose to customers that an affiliate, Liquid Asset Management, participated in bidding during CD auctions. FINRA found that some auctions could have yielded higher rates of interest if the affiliate hadn’t taken part.

A week earlier, the affiliate was fined $50,000 by the Utah Securities Division for conducting business without proper licenses.

Despite those improprieties, Zions has been praised by federal law enforcement officials for the bank’s role in stopping criminal financial activity.

In 2005, a federal grand jury handed up indictments against 15 people in Utah and Colombia, charging them with a money-laundering scheme to convert U.S. dollars made through drug sales in Colombia to pesos.

The defendants allegedly laundered $1.45 million through three banks in Florida and Utah. One of the banks was Zions, which was singled out for praise by Paul Warner, then U.S. attorney, who brought the charges. Zions was “extremely cooperative,” he said, adding the bank brought the alleged conduct to the attention of law enforcement.

So far, the allegations and fine announced earlier this month haven’t had any discernible effect on Zions. Gary Tenner, a securities analyst at D.A. Davidson and Co. in Portland, said the fine amounts to an $8 million slap on the wrist.

“These things happen. They aren’t the first bank to have a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act.”

“For investors, the bigger issue is, would this have an impact on their business going forward, and because it probably won’t, I don’t think investors are too concerned.”

Shareholder reactions to events such as a fine tend to unfold over time, experts say. That’s because investor options are limited. They can dump shares, sue the company and its officers, or vote for change at the company’s annual meeting.

There may be some discussion at the next Zions meeting with shareholders this spring. “It’s another wake-up call to a sleepy board of directors that needs to be kept awake, with the problems and challenges facing Zions,” said Gerald Armstrong, an activist who owns 896 Zions shares.

Armstrong wasn’t aware of the fine until told by a reporter. Although he is often dismissed as a nuisance by officers of the public companies in which he invests, Armstrong is often sought for comment by the media.

A Zions shareholder since 1971, he is no Johnny-come-lately. Armstrong regularly attends Zions meetings, and intends to bring up the fine at the next gathering.

“I recommend a ‘claw-back’ of the $8 million fine from the officers, directors and auditors,” Armstrong said, asserting that the fine is not tax-deductible, and therefore hurts shareholders who have already been hurt by nine consecutive quarterly losses.

Claw-back is a term that became popular during the financial crisis. It was used as a threat by which the government would take the bonuses paid to Wall Street executives before the meltdown.

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© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune

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 that, like MonaVie, sells a juice through a multilevel marketing plan, also known as direct selling or network marketing.

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Sons of the profits • Utah has at least nine major multilevel marketing (MLM) companies selling nutritional and body-care products that have more than $100 million in annual sales, according to Direct Selling News, a trade publication. The annual revenue of those nine add up to at least $4.49 billion, but Utah also has a number of smaller companies that are part of its nutritional supplements industry, which in total are a key component of the state’s economy.

The industry as a whole sees about $6.2 billion to $6.5 billion in annual sales, according to Loren Israelsen, executive director of the United Natural Products Alliance, a national industry trade group based in Salt Lake City. But he said the economic impact to the state is much broader if you include all of the providers of products and services, plus events such as the companies’ annual conventions.

“If you really throw everything in and just ballpark it for the economic impact on the state, I think it gets pretty close to $10 billion,” Israelsen said. “As best we can tell, behind tourism we’re the biggest industry.”

It’s the juice segment, though, that attracts the most attention lately, with flashy marketing and legions of independent distributors who earn commissions by recruiting others into their networks.

Critics say multilevel marketing and the companies’ controversial products by their very nature raise troubling questions. Are they creating a voodoo economy built on a veneer of science that makes spurious claims about the health benefits of fruit juices and about the riches that supposedly can be earned by distributors?

“Not only does it hurt our reputation as a state, it continues to perpetuate the problem because the younger generation sees too many people who make a quick buck from what turns out to be houses of cards,” said Josh James, the co-founder and former CEO of Omniture, one of the state’s most successful technology companies.

“The perception of get-rich-quick hurts their careers, prevents some people from being willing to put in a hard day of work to develop experience, and in many cases dramatically alters a family’s financial condition negatively.”

—

The lure of ‘healthful living’ • In mid-2010, Utah’s pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry encompassed 4,737 jobs and 79 businesses. That economic statistical area is a “fairly accurate proxy” for the nutritional supplements industry, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services.

Israelsen said the industry employs about 15,000 people in 150 to 160 companies when related businesses and services are included.

He traces the start of the industry in Utah to John Christopher of Springville, who wrote and lectured on the healing properties of herbs in the mid-20th century. His specific ideas about healthy diets fit nicely with the Mormon Word of Wisdom, which promotes the use of herbs in healthful living.

Christopher extolled “a style of healthful living that was quite resonant with Mormon culture,” Israelsen said.

The Utah nutritional industry got going in the late 1950s and early ’60s with four companies — Nature’s Way of Springville; Nature’s Sunshine Products in Spanish Fork; Nature’s Herbs, which is now part of IdeaSphere of American Fork; and Solaray, which is now part of Nutraceutical Corp. of Park City.

Those four started with what Israelsen calls the “classic story,” a family member with an illness who finds an herb or other natural product that helps alleviate the condition and then goes on to create a product to help others.

Nature’s Sunshine Products was Utah’s first MLM, following in the steps of Amway, the New York company that started in 1959.

MLMs recruit networks of independent distributors, sometimes called networkers, to buy their products. Distributors are told they are independent business operators who can build their enterprises by recruiting other distributors who are placed in their downlines, with commissions from sales to distributors moving up through various levels.

From a business standpoint, the use of multilevel marketing instead of selling products through established retail outlets has certain advantages. Start-up costs are low and marketing expenses minimal.

“We chose network marketing rather than a traditional way because there was a story to be told and that story needed more than a 30-second spot,” said John Wadsworth, co-founder and president of Tahitian Noni, the first MLM with a nutritional juice product. He also said that in founding the company in 1996, he and partners went the MLM route because they ran out of money.

The growth of such companies in Utah also came from two other factors, emulation of a successful enterprise and the presence of former LDS missionaries, said Clint McKinlay, a former executive turned distributorwho is now an industry consultant.

“One answer to why Utah is simply Nu Skin,” he said, referring to one of the oldest and most successful companies. “They were big, they were successful and a lot people work there.”

Network marketing companies also do well in other countries, creating a need for foreign language speakers, and Utah has a concentration of former missionaries sent around the world by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has its headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Plus, McKinlay said, MLM companies rely on intricate charts of distributors related through downlines, a task Mormons understand because of the faith’s emphasis on charting ancestors through genealogy and creating communities of believers.

—

A cutthroat industry • Tahitian Noni invented the nutritional “super fruit” juice drink and had the first wild success that spawned a number of imitators.

Wadsworth said while working as a scientist for other food companies, he discovered possible medicinal properties in the noni fruit from Tahiti, and that he and others created the product and the company.

The MLM was highly successful. One employee was Garrity, who left to help form XanGo, whose juice is based on the mangosteen fruit from Southeast Asia.

Morinda, Tahitian Noni’s parent company, sued Garrity and the other five XanGo founders in 2003, claiming they stole the concept for a juice based on mangosteen. The case was settled out of court in 2006 and its contents sealed.

XanGo, with its name, flashy logos, use of technology and hip marketing, brought multilevel marketing some respectability, McKinlay said.

“They made network marketing cool.”

Larsen, a former vice president at Usana Health Sciences, one of the state’s top MLMs, launched MonaVie in 2005 along with other co-founders, their juice based on the açai berry found in the Amazon jungle of Brazil. The company claims $2 billion in sales since its launch, though it is privately held and the number can’t be verified.

What’s clear from court records, though, is that MonaVie was built by using million-dollar payments to woo top distributors away from other companies, including Tahitian Noni, XanGo and Amway. The practice has spawned lawsuits against MonaVie and distributors who have left other companies.

“MonaVie does have a reputation out there that they’ve tried to build their business by trying to steal downlines from other businesses,” said Andre Peterson, Tahitian Noni director of public relations.

In an interview last year, Larsen defended the company’s practices.

“I believe when a distributor believes his or hers dreams and goals are going to be better served going to this company or that company they ought to have a right,” he said.

While not naming other companies, Tahitian Noni’s Wadsworth also complained that those who entered the business after his company have done so not on the quality of their products.

“They are very good at marketing, they just don’t have the science we have,” he said.

For his part, Garrity, a recognized marketing innovator in the industry, said in an interview last year the industry had become moribund by the time he helped found XanGo.

“I found in the industry the companies would actually spend more on the actual contents of the products and pay less attention to the brand,” he said.

—

Outsized profits • Garrity and others in the business have made themselves quite wealthy.

Court documents in a lawsuit by several original investors showed that for tax purposes in 2006 alone, Garrity’s share of XanGo’s profits was $6.3 million, with the company showing taxable income of $36.7 million.

Although MonaVie won’t disclose its profits, co-founder Henry Marsh, a former Olympic steeplechase runner, said they are similar throughout the industry with those of publicly traded companies that must report their financial data to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nu Skin said in its annual report for 2010 it had $1.5 billion in revenue and a net income of $136 million. Usana Health Sciences reported $436 million in sales revenue in 2009, with $33.5 million in net income.

If MonaVie had $2 billion in sales since its founding, then, according to those industry numbers, its profits might be somewhere around $160 million.

—

A healthy skepticism • Whatever the numbers, the MLM juice industry is controversial among critics and skeptics because:

• Distributors provide almost all the revenue to the companies, not retail sales from consumers.

• The companies hold out images of riches to be had if the distributors work hard and build their own businesses. But only a tiny fraction make millions and more than 90 percent in some companies make little or no return on their investments in products, time, training materials and other expenditures needed to recruit downlines. Average turnover is 56 percent annually, according to the Direct Selling Association.

• The companies clothe their products in the veneer of science, citing studies that show their ingredients or juices have qualities that make them potent health-promoting foods. Yet their health benefits remain largely unproven. There is no way to definitively judge whether one product is more authentic than another, let alone more effective, food scientists and nutritionists say.

• The products are expensive ­— $30 or more wholesale for less than a quart of their fruit juice — that may not in some cases be better for you than fruit juice from a retail outlet at a fraction of the price.

—

Good for Utah? • All of that has led some in Utah to question whether the state is well served by having such a concentration of high-profile MLMs.

To measure the social worth of an enterprise, Greg Warnock, a co-founder of Mercato Partners, points to “value engineering,” in which a product or service meets a need or solves an important problem. His company provides capital primarily in the technology sector.

“Some companies generate short-term profits through sales tactics and complex and recursive incentive plans,” Warnock said in an e-mail. “Utahns should be concerned about businesses that use extraordinarily high-pressure sales strategies, that approach those less able to protect themselves from aggressive or manipulative ‘get rich quick’ sales conversations in the home.”

Although James, the Omniture co-founder, pointed to companies such as Nu Skin that he believes sell legitimate products, he added: “Selling a product that doesn’t deliver or that has too much hand waving by paid PhDs and MDs purporting to have some previously undiscovered beneficial effects isn’t right. Making money off of signing up people for MLM companies that don’t have any real products to sell or that make big commissions off of forced product purchases, even though there is a low historical success rate of reselling those back into the market, is not right.”

—

A growing ‘juice fatigue’ • According to industry insiders, juice MLM revenue has fallen — quite sharply in some cases — from its tremendous highs a few years ago. MonaVie reported $855 million in revenue in 2008, which landed it third in total revenue on Inc. magazine’s list of 500 of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. It did not make the 2010 list.

Devin Thorpe, chief financial officer, said the company started to grow again in the second half of 2010 but that it would not disclose its 2009 or 2010 revenues.

McKinlay, the consultant, said there’s a bit of “juice fatigue” in the marketplace because of the proliferation of those companies and their products, a notion MonaVie President Dell Brown pooh-poohed as “akin to a top cola company worrying about ‘soda pop fatigue.’ ’’

XanGo said that although it had not been immune to the effects of the recession, its international business was offsetting a slow domestic market and that it remained “strong and profitable.” The number of its distributors was expanding and it had signed “several big names in network marketing” without using signing bonuses, the company said.

The companies and their officers remain true believers, in themselves and their products.

In Orlando last month, Larsen closed the meeting by urging the distributors to buy their tickets for the MonaVie convention in June in Salt Lake City.

“Three to five years from now, there’s not a person in this room who can’t have worldwide MonaVie business,” he said.

—

tharvey@sltrib.com

—

The big nine: Utah’s top multilevel marketing companies

Multilevel marketing companies in Utah that have at least $100 million in revenue in 2009 are:

Nu Skin Enterprises Inc.

Annual revenue • $1.5 billion

Distributors • More than 794,000

Employees • 3,400

Headquarters • Provo

MonaVie LLC

Annual revenue • $785 million

Distributors • 1 million

Employees • 80 (2010)

Headquarters • South Jordan

Tahitian Noni International Inc.

Annual revenue • $450 million

Distributors • 500,000

Employees • 1,200

Headquarters • Provo

Usana Health Sciences

Annual revenue • $437 million

Distributors • 198,000

Employees • 930

Headquarters •West Valley City

Neways Inc.

Annual Revenue • $400 million

Distributors • 500,000

Employees • 1,000

Headquarters • Springville

Nature’s Sunshine

Annual Revenue • $343 million

Distributors • 697,000

Employees • 1,191

Headquarters • Provo

XanGo LLC

Annual Revenue • $250 million

Distributors • 1.4 million

Employees • 450

Headquarters • Lehi

Figures are for 2009

Agel Enterprises LLC

Annual Revenue • $175 million

Distributors • 554,000

Employees • 250

Headquarters • Lehi

4Life Research

Annual Revenue • $150 million

Distributors • Not available

Employees • 300

Headquarters •Sandy

—

Source: Direct Selling News, SEC reports

The big nine: Utah’s top multilevel marketing companies

Multilevel marketing companies in Utah that had at least $100 million in revenue in 2009 were:

Nu Skin Enterprises Inc.

Annual revenue • $1.5 billion

Distributors • More than 794,000

Employees • 3,400

Headquarters • Provo

MonaVie LLC

Annual revenue • $785 million

Distributors • 1 million

Employees • 380 (2010)

Headquarters • South Jordan

Tahitian Noni International Inc.

Annual revenue • $450 million

Distributors • 500,000

Employees • 1,200

Headquarters •  Provo

Usana Health Sciences

Annual revenue •$437 million

Distributors • 198,000

Employees • 930

Headquarters •  West Valley City

Neways Inc.

Annual Revenue •$400 million

Distributors • 500,000

Employees • 1,000

Headquarters • Springville

Nature’s Sunshine

Annual Revenue •$343 million

Distributors • 697,000

Employees • 1,191

Headquarters • Provo

XanGo LLC

Annual Revenue • $250 million

Distributors • 1.4 million

Employees • 450

Headquarters •Lehi

Figures are for 2009

Agel Enterprises LLC

Annual Revenue •$175 million

Distributors • 554,000

Employees • 250

Headquarters • Lehi

4Life Research

Annual Revenue •$150 million

Distributors • Not available

Employees • 300

Headquarters • Sandy

Source • Direct Selling News, SEC reports

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© 2011 The Salt Lake T

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 throughout the American Zen community.

Such sexual behavior “cuts the legs from under Zen practice in this country,” said Franz Metcalf, a Buddhist scholar in Los Angeles. “It’s a tragedy on various levels.”

Sex between teachers and followers “is simply, to use the Buddhist term, wrong action,” Metcalf said in a phone interview. “And it violates [Buddhism’s] third precept against engaging in harmful sexual activity.”

In addition to his family, those hit hardest by Merzel’s misconduct are his followers.

“My first reaction was sadness,” Mark Esterman, a senior student at the center, said Friday. “I realized there was a lot of hurt here and a lot of suffering would result from this.”

The community has staged several “healing circles,” so people could share their feelings and discuss how to move forward.

The issues are also financial.

About a decade ago, Merzel created a program he calls “Big Mind.” It combines Zen teachings with Western psychology and promises a quicker path to enlightenment. The training can be pricey: His “5-5-50 program” offers five days of training for five people for $50,000.

Rumor has it that the Zen has front row season seats at the Jazz games. He got the tickets on a trade with Jerry Sloan, Deron Williams, Greg Miller, Randy Rigby, and Kevin O’Connor. Apparently they didn’t finish the classes. Deron insisted on being the teacher after the first day and it created a major rift.

On his website, Merzel says he will continue to lead his Big Mind training, which could limit revenue for his former center.

The center has tapped one of Merzel’s students, Richard Taido Christofferson Sensei, of Seattle, to take over teaching, training and administrative functions.

Christofferson’s appointment is a “first step toward the local community’s healing,” said former Utah Supreme Court Justice Michael Zimmerman, who, along with his wife, Diane Hamilton, was among Merzel’s students.

Zimmerman and Hamilton, who plan to open their own Zen center in downtown Salt Lake City next week, are committed to working cooperatively with Christofferson to support the larger Zen community.

They have left Kanzeon but were disappointed to hear about the misconduct of Merzel, who officiated at their wedding,

“I found him to be a strong and dedicated teacher and will always be grateful for his schooling me in Zen practice,” the former judge said. “What the future holds for Genpo is difficult to predict.”

pstack@sltrib.com

—

More on the Web

O Read Dennis Merzel’s statement.

> bigmind.org/Responsibility.html

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 potatoes. Who is transferring that kind of money to whom and for what purpose? Why was the Deseret News so slow to announce the story? Why did it choose to make it appear like just another two-bit fine? If all this money was legitimate church business then fine, we would at least know that it was baptized instead of laundered.

Why were these rules and regulations put in place? To help track possible drug money, and to reduce the possibility of enormous amounts of tax evasion, and possibly to get around campaign finance laws!

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.

Yes, we’re all intellectually dishonest on occasion. But no one does it like Republican conservatives. They are to intellectual dishonesty what Michael Jordan was to basketball or The Temptations to harmony: the avatar, the exemplar, the paradigm. They have elevated it beyond hypocrisy and political expedience. They have made it … art.

Which returns us to the astonishing thing Mitt Romney said while addressing the party faithful in St. Paul, Minn. You want to walk around it the way you would Michelangelo’s “David,” admiring the elegance of the workmanship. You hesitate to touch it, much less pull it apart. To do so seems almost an act of desecration.

Unfortunately, some of us are too plodding and earthbound, too blind to the seductions of art, too stubbornly wedded to some vestigial notion that intellectual honesty matters, to walk past a steaming pile of bovine excreta without calling it a steaming pile of bovine excreta.

So excuse me, beg pardon, so sorry, but I have to ask: what liberal Washington is he talking about? The federal government has three branches. The legislative, i.e., Congress, was under conservative control from 1995 until 2007. The judicial, i.e., the Supreme Court, consists of nine justices, seven of whom were nominated by conservative presidents. The executive, i.e., the president, is George W. Bush. Enough said.

Washington is already what Romney wants to make it. Our current state of affairs, love it or loathe it, is indisputably a product of conservative governance. I wish that mattered more than it does.

That it doesn’t matter much at all you can credit to conservative politicians who have, over the years, trained their followers to respond with Pavlovian faithfulness to certain terms. Say “conservative” and they wag their tails. Say “liberal” and they bare their fangs. More to the point, say either and all thinking ceases, so much so that a representative of the ideology that has controlled most of Washington most of the last 12 years can say with a straight face that his ideology needs to seize control of Washington to fix what is broken there. And people hear this Orwellian doublespeak … and cheer. Why not? They have been taught that words mean what you need them to in a given moment.

Sadly, it has proved an easy lesson to impart. Turns out, all it requires is a limitless supply of gall and the inherent belief that people are dumber than a bag of hammers.

And all it costs us is language, the ability to have reasoned and intelligent political discourse, the idea that words do, and should, have weight, dimension and intrinsic meaning. Maybe you disagree. In which case, let me just say this:

Piffle crack eat monkey snow. Really.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.’s column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is:lpitts@miamiherald.com

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 we don’t want anyone messin’ around with our religion.

We’ve got to get rid of Obama! This wouldn’t have happened under Bush. We could have whitewashed it easy with a call to Hatch. Hell, even Matheson has no influence with Obama. Here in Utah we are defenseless because we’ve put all our eggs in the Republican basket. That money we gave to them has gone right down a rat hole.

Oh well, we will just have to increase our fees and bounce more checks that will cause other checks to bounce and we can bounce that merry-go round back to profitability. We can recover this in a matter of weeks, but damn, we’re going to have to be careful not to bounce the wrong checks. We wouldn’t want to bounce our next TARP check.

It’s too damn bad we’ve got the Tribune in town or we could cover this up in a minute. We thought we had that covered when we arranged for Singleton to buy the Trib, but damn, he couldn’t control his staff. This free press stuff is sure a nuisance. We need to do something about that, but this internet stuff is getting pretty scary. Look what it did in Egypt. We don’t have a chance. Perhaps the jig is up!

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — a Treasury Department agency involved in fighting money laundering — also fined Salt Lake City-based Zions $8 million but said the government would be satisfied by a single payment of $8 million.

“The bank is supposed to file suspicious activity reports if they find suspicious activity, and the bank failed to file those on a timely basis,” OCC spokesman Dick DeBuck said.

“The regulations also require the bank to monitor this wire activity, and the bank did not do that, either.”

Zions did not admit or deny the allegations spelled out in separate documents issued by the OCC and the Financial Crimes Network.

In a statement, CEO Scott Anderson said the bank takes “very seriously our obligations to comply with federal laws and regulations, including the Bank Secrecy Act.”

Anderson said Zions has closed down the business unit handling the money transfers and has been cooperating fully with regulators.

“Over the past three years, we have employed considerable resources bankwide to significantly enhance our systems designed to detect and report potentially suspicious activities,” Anderson said in the statement.

The OCC said Zions had developed a “remote deposit capture product” that allowed customers to deposit imaged financial documents such as checks into accounts in Mexico and other countries from “remote” locations, ostensibly in the United States.

The product was marketed to “high-risk customers” in 2006 and 2007 “without sufficient regard to (Bank Secrecy and Patriot Act) compliance implications,” the OCC said.

The Financial Crimes Network said Zions failed to report 132 cases of suspicious activity that represented more than $12.3 billion.

“These suspicious activities involved, among other things, sequentially numbered travelers checks, possible black market peso exchange, transactions involving entities and accounts alleged to have been involved in drug trafficking activities and unusual wire transfers,” the Financial Crimes Network said in a document released Thursday.

The agency said Zions processed money transfers that indicated patterns commonly associated with money-laundering, such as the nature of the business, originators and beneficiaries in “high-risk” locations and lacked any apparent business or legal purpose.

This article that you are reading now appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune on February 12th. The Deseret News did not report on the violations although the two government agencies made a public announcement of the fines.

Now, two days later, the Deseret News published the following report which is astonishing in its downplay of the violations and fines. There is no detail offered, and infers that Zions Bank didn’t agree with the fines. It was as if Zions made a clerical error and it has been corrected. It was a bizarre take on the situation.

DeBuck said the OCC discovered the violations during examinations of the bank. But an OCC statement said the bank later conducted a voluntary assessment of its “foreign correspondent business” after shutting down the unit. Zions then reported suspicious activity to the agency.

According to the Financial Crimes Network, Zions filed 20 reports of suspicious activity after the review. The transactions involved in the activity totaled $11.5 billion, according to the network.

“With these actions, we are sending another strong message that banks need to be vigilant and ensure that they have effective anti-money laundering programs in place,” John Walsh, the OCC’s acting director, said.

pbeebe@sltrib.com

© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune

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 in December.

Researchers examined the diameter of blood vessels in the back of the eye (the only part of the body where tiny blood vessels called arterioles are directly visible) in 4,607 people. Arterioles narrow with age and disease processes like high blood pressure. The investigators correlated narrowing of these arterioles with the amount of PM2.5 air pollution the patients were exposed to and discovered this: Chronic exposure to 3 micrograins per cubic meter of PM2.5 was associated with the amount of arteriole narrowing as would be found from seven years of aging, or a 3 mmHg increase in blood pressure.

It just so happens that 3 micrograins per cubic meter of PM2.5 is about how much pollution Rio Tinto admits to being responsible for in Salt Lake and Utah counties. This becomes a sobering confirmation of the health price tag we all pay for Rio Tinto.

In August, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study demonstrating lung and chromosomal damage among oil spill cleanup workers whose exposure was comparable to that of Salt Lake City/Red Butte Creek residents during the Chevron oil spill: “Our findings indicate that exposure to oil sediments, even for short periods, may have detrimental health effects.” This type of chromosomal damage has been associated with increased cancer risk.

Last April, an Associated Press nationwide investigation discovered that pollution from oil refineries is at least 10 times greater than what is publicly reported to the government. With five refineries near Woods Cross, what is most depressing is the ongoing silence on the part of any Utah officials in response.

As the 2011 Legislature prepares its agenda, it would certainly be a breath of fresh air if mounting evidence on the ravages of air pollution began shaping public policy. But don’t count on it unless citizens consider this something worth fighting for. Start by contacting your legislators and demanding some New Year’s “pollution” resolutions. My list:

Be it resolved that we finally give mass transit funding priority over freeways; that we say no to Rio Tinto’s expansion as they are already our biggest polluter; that we demand real, not imaginary, or dishonest data about how much pollution our refineries emit; that Chevron pay for a health study of exposed Red Butte residents and move the pipeline away from Red Butte Creek; that those legislators scheming to weaken the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and the Division of Air Quality be exposed for violating the public trust; and those state agencies be liberated from the pressure to act as handmaidens of industry and function in their proper role as guardians of public health. Keeping these resolutions would bring a truly Happy New Year.

Brian Moench is president of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and teaches health and the environment at the University of Utah Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

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 independence vigorously. But Conway said The Tribune also has developed an informal partnership with KUTV Channel 2. And it acknowledges the Internet’s central role in delivering news through an assortment of digital devices.

“The printed newspaper is still our core. It is the only medium left for advertisers to reach a mass audience in an otherwise very fragmented market. We believe it will stay that way for the foreseeable future,” Conway said.

“We are committed to putting out a full-service newspaper. In the meantime, we are building online and mobile products, and we are also experiencing tremendous growth in online readership,” Conway said.

“Don’t think for a minute we can’t compete online,” she said.

At the heart of the growing differences between The Tribune and the News is a marked erosion in advertising revenue, primarily classified ads. To cope, the papers have had to develop new revenue sources, as well as ways to hang on to readers.

The Tribune’s path, as outlined by Conway, has been to adhere to more traditional forms of journalism while developing new digital products and revenue sources. The paper’s staff of 160 reporters, editors and photographers is larger today than it was seven years ago, when Conway was named to the paper’s top job.

The Tribune continues to draw on the expertise of professional, full-time journalists. By contrast, the News, which laid off 43 percent of its staff in September, leans heavily on non-journalist contributors and KSL-TV reporters to write for the paper.

Making its model of news-gathering work, Willes said, are experienced News editors with high standards for story selection, journalistic quality and other factors critical to producing trustworthy newspaper and television narratives.

“When you move down to the reporting function, in our opinion at least, that depends on what you are trying to cover,” said Willes, who formerly was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

“Do you need a full-time reporter to write a review on the Utah Symphony? Or do you have other people who you can find who know as much about music as anybody else who would ever be in our newsroom and would be willing to write for us?” Willes asked.

“Our answer to that is, yes, there are lots of things that you can cover, then you don’t have to have somebody in your newsroom, as long as … you perform the editorial function in the right way,” he said.

Some disciplines, such as covering state government, require experienced reporters, Willes acknowledged.

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 the Legislature reconvened last month.

No such luck.

The Legislature has come back with another dopey proposal called Senate Bill 53, this time with a new starting quarterback, Mark Madsen, R-Eagle Mountain.

Now they’re proposing that students — and by this we mean “athletes” — have a certain time frame in which they can transfer. Between Dec. 1 and June 30 of each school year, students can request a transfer to another school. Which means student-athletes (or, in this case, “athlete-students”) could play for four high schools in four years.

I’ve been a high school track coach for 20 years, and I can’t think of a worse proposal for high school sports, period. I believe most coaches would agree.

The Utah High School Activities Association — remember them, the experts who are paid to do this sort of thing? — are also unhappy about it, and you would be, too, if you care about a level playing field. I do.

This is the sort of maneuver that UHSAA officials expect from stage parents, not their own legislators. They’re supposed to be on the same team.

Last June, the UHSAA’s board of trustees passed a rule, effective Sept. 1, that students could attend any high school upon first entry, but after that they would lose one year of athletic eligibility if they transfer (with the usual exception for hardship cases). It formalized the way the transfer rule had been working for years anyway, since it was nearly impossible to stop kids from choosing an out-of-boundary school upon initial entry under the open enrollment law.

Now, four months after the rule took effect, the Legislature has thrown down a challenge to the rule by coming up with its own proposal, and one that is naive at best.

Ever notice that politicians like to get involved in athletic matters? They like to think they can remedy the college bowl system and the high school transfer problem and the IOC and steroids in pro sports. If you were keeping a record of their swings and misses, they’d have a batting average of about .000.

That doesn’t stop them from swinging. In their minds, they are Barry Bonds on ‘roids and every pitched ball looks like a watermelon.

Fortunately, they have time to meddle in the sports world because, let’s face it, everything else is going so well. Immigration is sailing along smoothly, the deficit is under control, the health care debate is solved, the economy is soaring, everyone has jobs. So they turn their deft touch to sports.

Don’t you wish they wouldn’t?

Well, the legislators’ rationale for meddling with the transfer rule is to give complete control of a student’s school choices to parents. Unfortunately, we live on planet Earth and we deal with human beings and, although parental-control is a nice theory, it doesn’t work well for sports. Ever seen a little league dad? A stage mom? It’s not a pretty picture. Parents do most of the lying and deceit that the UHSAA deals with regularly.

Look, sports is different than, say, art class or a special academic program. There isn’t a sport at any level, from little league to pros, that doesn’t restrict player movement. It fosters competitive balance. A transfer-free-for-all might be good for a handful of elite kids, but not for the greater good, not for everyone’s kids. Without restrictions, the strong teams get stronger, the weak teams get weaker; dynasties form. Instead of giving many teams a chance to contend for a region or state title — and thus producing a better experience for more students and athletes — only a handful enjoy that experience. It turns the high school athletic system into a platform for elite athletes.

The transfer free-for-all has other ramifications. Every time a coach scolds or corrects or benches a player, the player can simply go to another school and run from problems and challenges instead of dealing with them.

The UHSAA board of trustees is made of 28 members who were elected to those positions. They represent every area of the state. They have been delegated to oversee extracurricular activities for high schools, and they’ve been doing it for 84 years. They know a lot more about their business than legislators. Know what the vote was on the UHSAA’s latest transfer rule: 116-6. It wasn’t even close.

“They represent the feelings of our schools out there,” says UHSAA director Rob Cuff.

Kids can transfer freely for academic reasons, but if they want to play sports, that’s another matter. Colorado tried suspending its transfer rule and it was a disaster; now the state has transfer restrictions in place.

“All states have restrictions,” says Cuff. If SB53 passes, Cuff notes, “This would be one of the most lax (rules), if not the most lax in the country.”

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 that this base budget is providing the funds necessary to educate 14,000 new students is the same as a family believing it has plenty of cash for food to feed an additional child, when the money has been taken out of the mortgage fund. Family members might not go hungry, but there’s a good chance they could get put out on the street.

State Superintendent Larry Shumway said the budget figures agreed to last week really translate into a reduction of $291 per student. And that’s quite a hit to a state education system that already operates on less state money per-student than any other state. Utah is not just at the bottom, below all states and the District of Columbia, it spends far less than the next-lowest state. And the gap grows every year.

Some legislators say the base budget is no more than a starting point and that final figures likely will be much different. Updated revenue numbers could reduce the need for cuts. But so would revenue-enhancing proposals, including one to change income-tax filing deadlines for the self-employed that was endorsed by Gov. Gary Herbert, who also reasonably recommends taking more money from the state Rainy Day Fund to shore up education.

Simply moving money around and failing to fund growth for the third straight year is no budget plan at all. It’s a shell game.