Former FBI Director James Comey recently called on voters to elect Democrats this November saying, “Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.”
And just a few weeks ago, conservative George Will authored an op-ed titled, “Vote Against the GOP this November.” Will wrote, “In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him.”
Even as I slip on my brand new “Impeach 45” t-shirt, I feel prompted to use this time to remind and assure everyone that we will be okay. America will endure well because it was constructed to endure well. Our dead white fathers were many things but, above all, they understood human nature and built a nation that could withstand tremendous shocks to its system and could repair damages in due time.
My “Impeach 45” shirt displays my concern that Trump threatens systemic elements of our constitutional republic and democratic processes. That is it. Wanting him out of office has little to do with his often-insane level of ignorance about freedom. Americans have survived a whole bunch of leaders who fit that category. The real concern is threats to freedom’s support system.
As Salt Lake Tribune columnist Robert Gehrke laments a new poll revealing that over half of Utahns oppose a ballot initiative to raise the gas tax to increase funding for education, I wonder why Utahns fail to understand the nature of public education. A person can be pro-education and still oppose a gas tax. What a reasonable person cannot do is claim to be in favor of public schools but only the schools their children attend.
The real problem inside Utah public education is the failure to embrace all Utah children. The money is there. Utah spends more of its budget on education than any other state. The outcomes are there. Utah has higher graduation rates than states that spend as much as three times more per pupil. Utah’s middle to upper class kids do well because the entire public school system – from standardization to family structure – serves them well.
In the span of 30 years on the United States Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy changed the face of America and, in doing so, created Donald Trump and deepened our political divisions. While Justice Kennedy is receiving great accolades for many important court decisions that he authored, his legacy should be judged by his activism more than by any wisdom he provided.
Even after authoring Lawrence and Obergefell, perhaps Justice Kennedy’s greatest effrontery was his 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upholding Roe v. Wade, wherein he wrote, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Actually, at the heart of liberty is order and a broad American consensus about the meaning of human life. If he did nothing else, this concept alone makes Justice Kennedy perhaps the greatest enemy of freedom on the Court since Chief Justice Roger Taney’s Dred Scott decision.
Since the advent of an Internet marketplace, states have been forbidden from collecting sales taxes for online purchases made out-of-state. States, such as Utah, have opted to work around that prohibition by encouraging online consumers to self-report on state tax forms and by creating direct agreements with large online sellers such as Amazon to collect taxes. But, by and large, those methods have been inefficient and unpredictable.
Well, all of that will now change with the Wayfair decision.
The United States Supreme Court just ruled that the old law governing collection of online sales taxes has become unfair and anachronistic. In a 5-4 decision, dominated by conservative justices, the Court corrected years of tax inequities and market distortions overturning its own previous decisions.
The Trump Administration has placed the name of Utah’s Ron Mortensen before the United States Senate as the administration’s nominee as the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration – and senators, especially Utah’s senators, should oppose Mortensen’s confirmation.
The Bureau of PRM was created to “provide protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world on behalf of the American people….” PRM “provides aid and sustainable solutions for refugees, victims of conflict and stateless people around the world, through repatriation, local integration, and resettlement in the United States. PRM also promotes the United States’ population and migration policies.”
Most Utahns do not know what it is like to smoke pot or use cannabis in any of its commercial forms. I do. I smoked lots of pot when I was a teenager – lots of it. I bought it. I sold it. It’s no secret among people who really know me and I do not mind talking about it. I do not care who knows about it. My kids know. Any close co-worker knows. I unhesitatingly reported it on my application to get a Top Secret security clearance when I worked in Congress.
Whenever I write or speak about any aspect of public policy dealing with marijuana, I inevitably receive all sorts of feedback from people correcting me about this or that. Everyone has an opinion and that is cool. Most criticisms of my pot commentaries complain about my use of generalities. Pot supporters, it turns out, are obsessed by pot minutia – everything from vernacular to science to medicine to the law. And, you know, I am not really surprised by these high-minded attempts to intellectualize a narcotic. Have you ever actually listened to two potheads discuss world affairs? They think they make sense.
Robert Gehrke column on Trump nomination of Utahn Ron Mortensen to a federal post.
“I know he has experience working with refugees outside of the country. I don’t know about his experience with refugees inside the country,” said Paul Mero, who hired Mortensen when Mero was president of the conservative Sutherland Institute. “In fact, the only thing I really do know is that he’s very anti-immigration and anti-refugee.”
In November 2014, I received a call from Governor Gary Herbert’s staff inviting, and then asking, me to stand with the governor as he announced his Healthy Utah plan – the plan that opponents referred to as “Medicaid expansion.” I knew nothing about the plan at the time, was sent some briefing materials and, ultimately, agreed to stand with him largely out of friendship and respect.
Of course, as a well-known conservative voice in Utah, I was heavily criticized for so-called “endorsing” the Healthy Utah plan. Up to the point of the press conference, I had not endorsed any such thing. I attended, as I said, out of respect and friendship. But a funny thing happened while standing there along side the governor and so many high-profile community leaders: I agreed with what the governor was proposing. It made sense. In fact, I agreed so much with what he described about the plan that I embraced it and argued for it among our conservative legislators.
You might think after decades of horrible sexual abuses perpetrated by people in authority over innocent and trusting individuals that law and policy would reflect every reality faced by the victims in a litigious society. But you would be wrong. Even today, victims of sexual abuse still face the humiliation of the original abuse and the subsequent abuses associated with having to face it and report it.
Just this month, a new law took effect removing the statute of limitations on childhood victims of sexual abuse in Utah. But the law has not gone far enough in my opinion. We should extend this legal courtesy to anyone sexually abused by someone in authority – be they subject to a parent or guardian, an employer, a school teacher, a youth leader, a law enforcement officer, a caretaker or, yes, even an ecclesiastical leader.
