Author Archives: ptmadmin

Over the weekend, Richard Davis, chairman of the Utah County Democratic Party, wrote an op-ed bemoaning why Democrats get so little support in the state. He begins by drawing an analogy to shopping in Russia where consumers only get one choice of product, and then says that Utah politics is like that – that we only get one choice.

He blames the convention system, in part, for this dilemma. He wonders why the few get to select the few while hundreds of thousands of Utahns are left in the lurch. He then grumbles that voters shouldn’t vote straight party tickets and that voters should take a good look at Democratic candidates. read more

Why would anybody want to read the Utah State Constitution? We all know that only the United States Constitution is important! In fact, doesn’t the recent Prop 8 decision in California prove that state constitutions are meaningless these days? Well, no. Our state constitution is every bit as meaningful as our national one.

So…who’s read our state constitution? Have any of you school teachers read it? If not, my guess is that our kids haven’t read it either.

Well, our Sutherland Institute has a good deal for you: send us your contact info and we’ll send you a nice, clean copy of the Utah State Constitution. But before I give you our contact info, let me share some tidbits with you. read more

American culture has been structured around the ideal of an educated citizenry. This ideal holds that a free society requires educated people and that educated people create free societies. No less than Thomas Jefferson has written that, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

There are lots of ways we could go with this thought. We could challenge it – we could ask if Jefferson’s opinion is true: do well-educated people create free societies? In our day and age, well-educated people seem to be the ones more inclined to create Big Government and it’s the more humble people, the God-fearing people, the less educated people who seem to appreciate less government and real freedom. read more

It never dawned on me that there could be a liberal sports writer. Sports are pretty cut and dried. I never would have thought that liberalism could invade an arena where politics is meaningless and where human effort alone is the test of what is good.

Sports are about effort, discipline, teamwork, and, of course, winners and losers. But, evidently, according to Amy Donaldson of the Deseret News, sports really aren’t about winning. Outside of randomly quoting Vince Lombardi and John Wooden, she doesn’t really say why sports aren’t about winning. She just knows she hates the whole idea – and she hates it most today in the form of Lebron James. read more

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing both of Utah’s Republican Senate candidates: Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater. Both men are smart and appear to be capable candidates. Both men also claim to be philosophical conservatives. But in this day and age, thinking like a conservative sometimes gets mixed up with acting like a libertarian – and any discussion about the war on drugs seems to bring out this point.

Early in our interview, I told each candidate that I would now try to separate their inner conservative from their inner libertarian and asked both of them if they would push to end the war on drugs. Both candidates said they would not. Both men said they would not push to make illicit drugs legal. read more

Every now and then, Sutherland hosts prominent groups of Utahns to help provide us with input and feedback about our work. On one occasion we asked one group what they felt was right with Utah – or what they liked about Utah.

One gentleman, without hesitation, chimed in that he liked Utahns’ strong sense of purpose in terms of seeing themselves as contributors to the world. Another member of the group, in this case an actual outsider from Illinois, said he liked the fact that Utah is a child-rich state. Another person cited our open space and rural communities. One woman added that she appreciates our values-driven approach to life. Still another mentioned our strong work ethic and our commitment to higher education (meaning that parents take a college education seriously). read more

With December being a month of religious holidays for so many different people of faith, and with Christmas hitting us at the end of the week, I would hope that the concept of religious freedom crosses the minds of all Utahns.

It just so happens that my political career has coincided with the steep secularization of the United States. It’s really easy to see. There’s a lot more debate about America being a “Christian nation,” which will always be the high-sign that secularization and religiosity are colliding. And, in Utah, this same debate sounds a lot like Utah being described as a “Mormon state.” read more

A couple of years ago, the State Legislature removed the state-portion of the sales tax on most food items. Effectively, that meant instead of paying a full 4.75 percent on tax at the grocery store, we would spend only 1.75 percent on taxes.

Sutherland was a big supporter of the repeal when it passed during the 2006 legislative session. In the summer of 2005, in an Interim Committee meeting, we testified that,

The sales tax is the best tax, if there is such a thing. It is fair – it taxes consumption. It is simple – a uniform statewide sales tax is easy to understand and apply. Wealthier people will pay more, poorer people will pay less. It captures more of the dollars of out-of-state consumers…For these reasons, the sales tax ought to be used more aggressively in tax policy. read more

As fate would have it, today’s Mero Moment falls right in between the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Veterans Day.

Over the weekend I took my dad to an inspiring Veterans Day celebration. It was a musical mixed with old film footage from World War II. As I sat there with dad it dawned on me that, when I turned 19 years old, I was in Nashville, Tennessee on my way to school in Dallas, Texas. My dad turned 19 at Iwo Jima.

At 19 years old, dad had already been overseas for a year. He celebrated his 18th birthday in San Diego at boot camp. He went from there to the Philippines where, after several months, he contracted malaria and was sent to Honolulu to recover. When he felt better he was back with his naval group in the deep Pacific. He rejoined his group at night and didn’t know where he was. At morning, with the break of dawn, he found himself at Iwo Jima. Eight hundred ships and boats were poised for attack. Dad drove an LCM – those landing crafts that you see in newsreels where the gate comes down and the Marines hop off for battle. read more

In 2008, the Utah State Legislature passed SB81 in an attempt to curb the growth of illegal immigration in the state. Many of us who opposed SB 81 warned that there would be many unintended consequences and that we really wouldn’t discover many of these until it became law – which it did last July 1st.

I received a call from a friend last week who helps Hispanics start businesses in Utah. She told me that several of the folks she’s helped recently were being denied a license to pay sales taxes because they were undocumented and did not have a valid Social Security number. In the past, she told me, no one asked for a Social Security number for someone to start a business. She wondered if I’d look into it. read more