Paul Mero

Most conservatives do not believe in the gender wage gap. Many do not even believe in the widely cited data showing that women make 82 percent the wages of men – meaning for every dollar a man makes a woman makes 82 cents on that dollar for equal work – and there are good reasons to believe these conservatives are correct to question some facts in the gender wage gap debate.

As the argument goes, these conservative gap deniers point out that men and women doing the same work to the same degree inevitably make the same pay. In fact, as they point out, it is illegal to differentiate pay by gender under those specific circumstances. By contrast, what these conservatives argue is that differences in pay are not due to discrimination but because men and women are often not really doing the same job to the same degree. read more

For over two years I have blasted Donald Trump as unfit to be President of the United States. I have been relentless and unforgiving in my opposition. He remains a man of ill repute, in my opinion, and, for many reasons, I stand by my prediction that he will resign before the end of the year. But all along I have been haunted by a nagging question: Why have so many smart and experienced people, some of them my friends, gone to work for him? They are not blind. They see what we see. Yet, they defend him still or, at the very least, do not resign their positions. Why? read more

Is Donald Trump a racist? No, he is a New Yorker. Trump is an equal opportunity offender. He’s not a racist. Being a racist requires ideology. Trump is transactional. He’ll take anyone’s money. He’s not racist. He’s a narcissist incapable of caring about anyone unable to please him. When he says he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body or reassures Americans that he is the least racist person they will ever meet, I believe he believes that. Trump is no respecter of persons – not in that good nondiscriminatory Jesus way but in that uncharitable, unsympathetic, unfeeling, uncaring, certainly not empathic way. read more

On June 7, 1981, the Israeli air force attacked and destroyed a nuclear plant facility in Iraq. Israel called it a preemptive attack. Its justification, they said, was that Iraq was on the verge of making nuclear weapons. Operation Babylon, as it was called, was roundly condemned by the international community, including the United States. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin responded with what became known as the Begin Doctrine: “On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of Israel. We shall defend the citizens of Israel in good time and with all the means at our disposal.” read more

In the aftermath of the failed early Senate votes to repeal Obamacare, Donald Trump tweeted, “The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R’s in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT’S TIME!” And followed with this Tweet, “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don’t go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time.”

As it turned out, even 51 votes could not be found to support any of the measures to repeal Obamacare. In late-night dramatic fashion, on the final Senate vote called “skinny repeal,” John McCain was the last to vote and his would be the deciding vote. Amidst the crowd of curious and frustrated senators at 1:30 am, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell staring him down, McCain approached the tally clerk, extended his hand equidistant between yea and nay, held it for what seemed like an eternity, and then lowered his thumb in opposition. read more

The push to defund Planned Parenthood is not new. As the nation’s largest provider of abortions today, Planned Parenthood has been under attack since eugenicist Margaret Sanger breathed life into it in 1916. It began as her effort at population control. She figured that if “inferior” people could be convinced (or forced) to stop having children, humanity’s future would be bright. This was the beginning of what we, conservatives, refer to as a “culture of death” – a culture in which preventing and ending life is of higher priority than creating and nurturing life. read more

To solve the health care fiasco in the United States, we have to understand actual health care markets and spending; we need to establish foundational principles from which to build health care policies; and, we need to strip health care debates of politics.

Short of paying cash or trading chickens for service, the private health care insurance market has served its customers relatively well. Insurance providers offer medical plans and consumers choose from those plans or not at all. As with all insurance, medical coverage is based on risk. If you live a healthy lifestyle and do not seem to suffer from a history of illness, you would pay lower premiums for your coverage. The opposite is true if you have chosen unhealthy behaviors and activities or if you have a history of some illness. This is the way insurance works and it will not work any other way. read more

In a recent Salt Lake Tribune commentary, I wrote about the problems of extremism in Utah politics. As a conservative, I focused on how many members of the Utah Republican Party had become radicalized. By radicalized, I mean many Utah Republicans have separated their personal values from their political principles. Historically, we have witnessed the horrors perpetrated by a society in which personal values were abandoned when so-called principles were idolized. For instance, it is hard to imagine, still to this day, how a German husband and father in the 1940s could gas Jews during the day and joyfully bounce a new child on his knee at night. read more