Paul Mero

You know, I have to admit it – Obama had me going. When he spoke of change, I actually believed he meant real change – like change that we haven’t seen before. I actually believed him that there was this new idea, called change, that we hadn’t ever experienced before. Well, was I mistaken.

Let’s face it. There’s only so many ways we can do government. We either free people or enslave them. Obama actually had me thinking there was another way to do government – like use government to solve everyone’s problems and still be free and prosperous. read more

We’re now mid-session with the Utah State Legislature and, while many things have been settled, there are still many matters left to be decided.

Settled is the gay rights debate.  Settled is the budget controversy.  Remaining are ethics and health care reforms, liquor laws, illegal immigration, the Western Climate Initiative, and, what’s known as the PTA bill.

I think we’ve turned a corner on ethics reform.  The biggest hurdle has been to convince legislators that there’s a huge perception problem.  For the last few years, they’ve settled on the idea that isolated problems have arisen and have been addressed.  But what they failed to fully comprehend is the public’s perceptions of their dealings.  In fact, they’d been responding in the absolute opposite, and wrong, way – the more they get criticized the more they’ve been inclined to think that doing something was an admission of guilt – and then they get themselves caught in a vicious public relations cycle.  The less they do about it, the more they get criticized, the more they get criticized, the less they do about it. read more

Early in my political career I worked for a great man…a congressman from California with quite a bit of seniority. He was the ranking member of the House Health and Environment Subcommittee and second ranking member on the full House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was a big shot.

In those days, the mid to late 80’s, Congress faced their initial responses to the AIDS epidemic. My boss, always the conservative, viewed HIV and AIDS as a sexually transmitted disease. Our opponents always viewed the matter as a civil rights issue given that nearly 100% of all cases of HIV were occurring within the gay community. read more

This week I want to talk about American health care.  Another think-tank friend, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute in California, has written a great book about popular myths of American health care.  She writes that, “on the simplest level, the question of how to reform the U.S. health care system boils down to this: How do we control costs without sacrificing quality?  And how can we reach coverage that is universal, or at least near universal?”

She goes on to say that, while there are many answers to these questions, “the vast majority of solutions proposed by today’s politicians fall into one of two ideological camps… read more

This week I want to talk about Utah’s liquor laws – and, as usual, yours truly will cut to the quick.  I think Utah’s liquor laws are confusing and unnecessarily complicated.  I also believe that an unorchestrated convergence of the liquor lobby, confused Mormons, the “Utah nice” crowd, and Mormon-haters have made it that way.

As public policy, liquor laws aren’t that complicated to understand.  We begin with a premise – is drinking liquor something society wants to encourage or discourage? read more

High school is a period of unparalleled change and growth for youth, and extracurricular activities can contribute greatly to this preparation. Students who participate in activities outside of the classroom, such as music, sports, drama, and student government, often develop valuable skills and attributes. For example, they are more likely to learn to cooperate with their peers, respect authority, develop responsibility, work hard, and become leaders.

For youth to gain the full benefits of general education, academics and extracurricular activities need to be tailored to their unique needs and interests. Students, under the direction of their parents, should have every opportunity possible to determine which activities and level of participation will best prepare them for adult life. In all aspects of education, parents should be free to act in the best interest of their children. read more

Last week, just prior to his meeting with leaders from all of the G20 countries, President George Bush spoke to a group of businessmen and women at the Federal Hall National Memorial in New York City about the economy.

Here’s a part of what he said, “While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today’s problems is sustained economic growth. And the surest path to that growth is free markets and free people.

“In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure…but the crisis was not a failure of the free market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems that we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to all across the globe.” read more

Heaven knows I’ve had a lot of time and experience to learn lessons in the debate over gay rights. I started my career in Washington DC the year that Congress first began to deal with AIDS. It was the same year of the first Gay March on Washington to get Congress to approve federal funding for AIDS. I still remember writing a press release for my congressional boss that included these words, “How much money do we have to spend to tell people not to bugger each other?” And, with that, a much maligned, but very effective, homophobic career was born. read more

My dad was born in 1926 in Raymond, Washington. The first black man he remembers seeing wasn’t until the family moved to San Francisco in 1933. Even then, dad attended Catholic school and the black kids attended public school.

Dad fought in the Pacific during World War II…the day after he turned 18, he was at boot camp and less than one year later he was at Iwo Jima. For the two and a half years dad spent over seas in a segregated military, he only saw black men once, and that was while he was in a hospital recovering from an injury. He told me that he never understood why the military was like that. He figured a man was a man. read more