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 WSJ
Highlights Utah’s Bankruptcy Rates
Consumer debt is zooming and lots of families are in way over their
heads. Case in point: Utah. The Wall Street Journal’s front page
lead story on Tuesday highlighted Utah’s bankruptcy problem and
used anecdotes about several Utah families to illustrate overuse
of credit. Most of the story is reprinted
in today’s Deseret Morning News.
Since 1990, median American household income
has risen 11% after adjusting for inflation, while median household
spending has jumped 30%. Outstanding household debt doubled to more
than $1 trillion between 1992 and 2004, after adjusting for inflation.
“Utah vividly illustrates the changes credit has wrought in the
U.S.,” said the WSJ story. “Last year, 28 of every 1,000 Utah households
filed for bankruptcy, twice the national average and nearly triple
Utah’s rate a decade earlier.” Utahns often get married early and
have the largest families in the nation on average. “That makes
for a lot of young parents with modest incomes looking for big homes
and cars.”
The story says Utah is doing a lot of “soul-searching”
and quotes President Thomas Monson, the LDS Church’s second-ranking
leader, as saying in General Conference that he was “appalled” at
advertising for home equity loans that are “designed to tempt us
to borrow more in order to have more.”
TREEES Principles
to Guide Tax Reform
As the Legislature and Gov. Jon Huntsman embark upon the
quest to reform taxes in Utah, the governor’s office will be guided
by the TREEES principles, according to Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert.
The tax system in Utah should be: Transparent, Revenue Sufficient,
Efficient, Effective, Equitable and Simple.
All tax reform ideas will be measured against
those principles, Herbert said at Monday’s transportation forum
sponsored by the Salt Lake Chamber. He also said that transportation
funding and economic development will be part of the tax reform
discussions.
Simple Joys of a Library
Director
Pete Giacoma does a great job running Davis County’s library
system and he even has a sense of humor. He’s been with the library
for 25 years, director for 15. He’s built new library branches,
added electronic resources to the system and expanded the book collections.
In the May edition of the library’s employee newsletter, Giacoma
takes a light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek look at the seven “small
and simple joys” in a day in the life of a library director.
No. 3 joy is: “Playing chicken with Sean
Hannity. A minor thrill of the director’s day is to turn on
KSL Radio in the afternoon, listen to the news at the top of the
hour, then let the introductory music for the Sean Hannity show
start. The challenge is to see if I can get just far enough into
the music that I throw the turn-off switch in the very split second
between when the last note of the music stops and Sean starts to
say, ‘Hello Utah,’ such that I do not hear a single iota of a second
of his voice. On a really good day, I cut him off at 1:00, 2:00,
3:00, and 4:00; then I can leave the office saying, ‘Yeah, I cut
Sean Hannity off four times today.’ High fives all around (well,
actually only to myself, but the spirit of it is what counts). But,
with the creep of age, my index finger is getting a bit slow, and
more often now I actually hear the ‘He…’ before I throw the switch;
and once in a great while my form really breaks down and I hear
the entire ‘Hello.’ I am open to any suggestions that would help
me improve the performance of the old index finger so that my response
time does not deteriorate any further in the ‘extreme sport’ of
playing chicken with Sean.”
No. 7 joy is: “Playing with my rainbow-colored
Slinky . . . my MARC-Link retrospective Conversion Yo-Yo . . . and
my worry marbles, and tapping myself on the head with my honorary
Utah Library Association president’s mallet . . .”
You Are What You Drive
Campaigns and Elections magazine reported on a “very unscientific
survey” taken by 14 people who wanted to see what make of cars people
of different political ideologies drive, based on bumper stickers.
The team observed 1,342 bumper-stickered cars in a variety of states
toward the end of the presidential election last year.
All hybrid vehicles sported John Kerry or
left-leaning stickers, while 83% of large SUVs had Bush stickers.
Two-thirds of the Chevrolets carried stickers for Bush; 77% of the
Hondas were for Kerry. Toyotas were twice as likely to support Kerry;
all 10 Chevy Tahoes supported Bush. Both Mini Coopers liked Kerry.
The one Hummer was obviously for Bush. Some dissonance was observed
in the Volkswagen ranks. The tiny Beetles leaned to the left, while
the larger Passats were split down the middle. One bumper sticker
spotted on an old Chevy Lumina: “Nixon/Agnew.”
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Utah
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