Random Notes: This heat wave is almost enough to have me believing in global warming. Almost. +++ Something else is cookin’: Rep. Steve Urquhart has been promising a decision on the U.S. Senate race this week (see Morning News story). My sources say watch Urquhart’s blog closely today. +++ Interesting tidbit from FEC reports (Hotline, Tuesday, 7/19) lists cash on hand per capita among announced Senate candidates. Orrin Hatch is a respectable #14 at 73 cents per capita. Pete Ashdown is last at .08 cents per capita (but Ashdown hasn’t really gotten rolling yet.)
House GOP Raises $60,000
Well, I survived the House Republicans’ Bowler’s Ball last night, and I have the T-shirt to prove it. I haven’t hung out in a bowling alley with a bunch of seedy characters for a long time, so this was a lot of fun. In fact, the Republicans were having so much fun you’d have thought it was Democrats partying in there, except the coolers were full of soft drinks, not beer, and when the lights went down, leaving the lanes bathed in soft neon lights, I didn’t see any couples making out in the dark corners.
The event is the House GOP’s major fundraiser each year, and it was a sold-out affair, raising over $60,000. 46 lawmakers attended. It’s a little bit of a spoof on the formal, black-tie fundraisers that Utah governors traditionally have had, and it demonstrates that Republicans can, after all, let their hair down and have some raucous fun in a bowling alley. Kat Dayton and her team did a nice job putting the whole thing together.
Here are the major prize winners: Best Team Score: Bennett & Deloney with 686; Best Individual Score: Ryan Willis (Bennett & Deloney) with 278; Best Dressed Team: The Utah League of Credit Unions (Spencer Stokes, Steve Moffit, Steve Jones, and Rep. Kerry Gibson) in "Dogdeball" (the movie) outfits; Runner-Up Best Dressed Team: The Health Care Association - aka the Alley Cats - as Elvis & Priscilla Presley.
Participants also won prizes for random bowling achievements and answering trivia questions about members of House Republican Leadership and Utah Republican history. Here is a list of trivia questions and answers:
- When was Greg Curtis elected to the House of Representatives? Answer: 1994.
- How tall does Jeff Alexander say he is? Answer: 5’6". (Real Answer - we'll never know)
- Who was Utah's first Speaker of the House? Answer: William Phelps.
- What was Ben Ferry's major in college? Answer: Agriculture.
- When did the Republicans take control of the Utah House of Representatives? Answer: 1977
Washington Watch
Four Corners: National Heritage Area?
Sen. Hatch has introduced a bill that would designate the area around some of the most significant, accessible archaeological sites in the Four Corners region as a National Heritage Area. “The history of the Four Corners region is unique and important to Utahns and the nation, and its archaeological sites are remarkably well preserved,” says a Hatch press release.
School Choice Watch
Former Education Secretary Rod Paige says he's encouraged that school voucher programs are springing up in several states and feels the programs should be viewed as a form of social justice, reports Agapepress.org.
GOP Hurting, But Demos Can’t Capitalize
In his Tuesday e-mail column (sign up here), Charlie Cook says poll numbers for President Bush and the GOP Congress look lousy, but the Democrats don’t have great numbers themselves, and they can’t seem to capitalize on the woes of the Republicans.
Fascinating Wikipedia Profile
Don Savage, UPD reader and Utah political operative, sent in this link about Judge John G. Roberts
from Wikipedia, the reader-written on-line encyclopedia. It contains hundreds of links and sources.
State Taxes: $278.67 Per Second
Just how fast is the State of Utah spending our tax money? To get an idea, The Sutherland Institute Web site now features a "Spending Clock" graphic that represents the rate at which Utah is spending its budget dollars. The clock started calculating at midnight on July 1, 2005 and will continue through midnight June 30, 2006. The running total of money spent turns over and multiplies right before your eyes at the rate of just over $278.67 per second. The spending figure is based on the budget provided by the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. The Institute has also launched a "Utah Public Education Spending Clock" on its "Utah Schools at a Glance" web site that follows the same methodology.
People Watch
Bob Gross, an attorney, former bank executive and former congressional candidate, will chair a new Financial Services Regulatory Compliance Group at the law firm Jones Waldo Holbrook & McDonough. Gross also served as a senior advisory in Iraq and was founding director of the State Department of Workforce Services in the Leavitt administration.
Policy Perspectives
Stem Cells vs. Stem Cells: Confusion Clouds the Debate
(By Dan Bammes, long-time Utah radio personality and cancer survivor)
Stem cell research is held out to America’s taxpayers as a line of scientific investigation that holds great promise for curing Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes and many other maladies. Advocates believe the federal government should be funding research into the use of embryonic stem cells as treatments, while opponents argue that harvesting those stem cells involves the destruction of a human embryo.
Sometimes, the argument is put forward that there is some kind of a middle ground. So-called “adult” stem cells, or even cells harvested from the umbilical cords of newborn infants, are seen as holding equivalent promise without the need to destroy a developing embryo to get them. This would be a wonderful thing if it were true, but it is not.
The confusion arises because the term “stem cells” is used for more than one kind of human cell. The cells harvested from adults or from umbilical cord blood are hematopoietic stem cells. They have the potential to become any kind of blood cell – white, red, platelet – but they cannot transform themselves into brain tissue to address Parkinson’s Disease or beta-cell pancreatic tissue in the case of diabetes. They are blood cells and their potential is limited to the circulatory and immune systems.
Hematopoietic stem cells normally live in the bone marrow. Two years ago, I was given a drug that allows them to circulate in the blood and then spent five days tethered to a machine that was able to separate them from other blood cells. All that effort resulted in about a shot glass full of stem cells, but that was enough. I checked into the hospital and was given a huge dose of chemotherapy that would have been fatal under normal circumstances. That destroyed the malignant cells living in my bone marrow. Then the harvested stem cells were put back into my body, where they immediately began to change into all the kinds of blood cells my body. Today my cancer (multiple myeloma) is in remission and I’m doing fine.
Again, those were hematopoietic stem cells, the kind nobody argues about. The cells that are causing the controversy are the other kind, harvested from human embryos at the blastocyst stage when the developing embryo is a ball of cells with a hollow center. These cells really do have the potential to become any kind of tissue in the human body. Left to themselves, that’s exactly what they do. Whether a blastocyst is a human life or not depends on your point of view, but the important point is not to confuse the stem cells obtained in this way from the other kind.
Opponents of embryonic stem cell research sometimes benefit from the confusion when they suggest that “adult” stem cells are an alternative to embryonic stem cells. Utah Policy Daily recently included a link to an article from the Catholic News Service that blurs the distinction. It may be that those who make this error mean well, but the fact is that the two kinds of stem cells are in no way equivalent and the research involving them has different goals.
The question of government funding for embryonic stem cell research has to be decided on its own merits, but those making the arguments need to understand clearly that there is no alternative available from adult human tissue or from umbilical cord blood. |
Utah
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