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Tax Cut Policy and Amounts Shaping Up As Big Battle
It’s going to be fascinating to watch: The House, Senate and governor are at loggerheads over tax cuts. (See Morning News and Tribune). Inevitably, a compromise will be reached, but some very serious policy differences exist, not to mention some very strong personalities who are not inclined to give in. Higher revenue projections, however, could lubricate a middle ground position. The stalemate, however, is likely to go on for a few more weeks.
Podcast Watch
Check out Jennifer Napier-Pearce’s InsideUtah.com Podcast featuring leading national conservative Grover Norquist on tax cuts and tax reform (:38); Utah Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka on "Brokeback Mountain" and legislative priorities(10:38); Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff on yet another stab at a hate crimes bill (16:16); and BYU professor Marc Olivier on the strange relationship between nostalgia and technology (19:48).
Blog Watch
Reach Upward links to an interesting Orson Scott Card article on Intelligent Design... Mountain View Corridor has a post on water vs. roads funding... Gazelem responds to Gov. Huntsman's State of the State address... At OneUtah, Cliff Lyon has a post on Sen. Patrice Arent's anti-bullying resolution... The World, According to Me scooped Paul Rolly on Phil Riesen running for the Legislature ... Planet Legislature's full of bloggy goodness, as usual... The Senate Site blog has a post on the Senate Majority's tax cut position... SLCSpin has an illustration of Rep. Jim Matheson "playing his part as a rebellious Blue Dog"... Jen's Green Journal and Dee's 'Dotes have posts on Envirocare... Utah Conservative thinks Rep. Rob Bishop should endorse Arizona Rep. John Shadegg for House Majority Leader.... The Lonely Canadian refers to the Sutherland Institute's Paul Mero in an epic-length post on the "scapegoating of homosexuals"... My Not-So-Humble Opinion says there's seems to be "an active movement within our state government to create a Utah without sin".
Washington Watch
Bennett Welcomes Interns, Visits Park City
Sen. Bob Bennett welcomes several Utah students who will work as interns in his Washington D.C. office, "learning about Congress and the legislative process and working with staff on legislative, communications, and administration assignments" (see press release); Bennett will join Picabo Street in Park City this weekend to support the National Children's Alliance.
SUWA Urges Flower Protection
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance joins other conservation groups in applauding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's proposal to protect the Graham’s beardtongue wildflower as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The coalition urges "the government to follow through as quickly as possible because threats from oil and gas drilling are mounting." For more info, click here.
Casual Friday
Welcome to Utah, Now Please Go Away: A Polemic
By Golden Webb
(I wrote this for Utah Outdoors
magazine a few years ago. Most of it was written
with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Though it has nothing
to do with the Sundance Film Festival itself, it was
addressed to the kind of people currently assembled in
Park City -- you know the kind I mean. Picture them
in your mind's eye: The caps on their teeth make them
look like Great White sharks when they smile. They
tilt their heads compassionately while sipping Clos
du Mesnil with ring and pinkie fingers fully extended.
Their eyes glisten wetly as they watch heroically
tragic movies about transgendered cowboy suicide
bombers with misunderstood hearts of gold. Their well-moisturized
faces look so earnest as they chatter
about the satanic evils of Pres. Chimpy McDuhbya
Hitlerburton. What follows is my love letter to them. But
it's tough love. If you're easily offended, as a gentleman
I must make this request: Please don't read a single solitary
sentence below. Please. You've been warned.)
The invasion takes place every year. Human hordes of almost biblical proportions swarm out of the world’s throbbing metropolitan dynamos of commerce and pleasure -- New York, London, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Tokyo -- and descend on the Promised Land of Utah like a black cloud of locusts. They come armed with the latest comprehensive guidebooks and clothed in the trendiest outdoor chic. They come looking for sun, sand, cliffrock and canyon. For "sick bird" ski runs, bottomless slots, and the ghost of Edward Abbey. Some are headed straight for injury or death -- at Utah taxpayer expense. In some ways it’s a complete disaster. In many ways it’s like a plague. Where are those flocks of giant man-eating seagulls when we need them?
I’m talking about all these Vibram-soled, L.L. Bean-clad strangers who are suddenly clogging up our mountains and deserts. Sometimes when I’m in the outback and I encounter these simpering esthetes on the trail, I experience a sense of temporal dislocation, like watching Alec Baldwin talk politics on TV. It’s a sense of: Who the hell are you? Why are you here? When are you going to shag your butt back to where you came from?
Dilettantish poseurs. John Kerry-voting, Strawpleberry Mocha Frappuccino-sipping, Mother Jones-reading, hipster E!-watching hoales.
I have a bit of a schizophrenic relationship with these people. First, to the extent that I’m a wannabe outdoorsman from Salt Lake, I’m one of them. Second, I feel a kind of xenophobic loathing for them. Actually, it’s more like hatred. Ricardo Montalban, channeling Herman Melville's Ahab, summed up my general sentiments in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:
“From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”
Used to be the only people you’d see in the remote corners of Utah’s mountains and deserts were prospectors, miners, geologists, cowboys, truck drivers, polygamists and sheepherders. Now it’s an urban-suburban bouillabaisse of deodorized humanity: college student weenies, Eurotrash socialists, Hollywood actresses, outdoor gear fetishists decked out for a mission to Mars. You’ve seen the type. What are they all doing here? Nobody seems to know.
Maybe you’re one of them. You're from one of the coasts. You're rich. You're bored. You're sick of spending insipid latte-soaked weekends discussing the philosophy of Sartre and the bourgeoisification of techno music with your keffiyeh-scarved friends down at the Che Guevara Cafe. You just got the latest Sierra Magazine in the mail, saw a couple cool pictures, and went and spent $2,000 at the Patagonia Outlet on mountaineering underwear. Now you think you're ready for a trip to some remote canyon south of Salina.
Not so fast, pardner. Here in Utah, we simpletons -- though the idea may seem quaint to a sophisticate like you -- think before we jump. Before you book that flight to Salt Lake, consider the following irrefutable facts. Consider them. Very. Carefully.
1) There’s no real fun to be had anywhere in Utah. The area between Las Vegas, Reno, and Denver is known as the Bermuda Triangle of Fun. It just disappears, like light into a black hole. There are laws on the books against gambling. The beer’s only 3.2. Forget about drugs; the only way to get a chemical rush in Utah is to take a dump on a rattlesnake.
2) The locals hate outsiders. They post John Bircher-NRA nuts armed with bazookas outside every town. Any “sport utility vehicle” with an out-of-state license plate gets blown off the road, especially if it's a Subaru with a Darwin fish decal and a Kanye West CD in the dash. If your car somehow gets past the checkpoint, a guy with bullhorn on a mule races through the streets, screaming, “Lock up yer daughters! The Gentiles are a comin’!” If the men-folk get their hands on you alive, it's easy to predict what happens next. If you're a male from the East or West Coast, they've probably never seen the likes of you before: that shaved chest, those waxed eyebrows, that fragrant rose petal body spray you're wearing. If you're lucky you'll be mistaken for the prettiest woman they've ever seen and taken as a polygamous wife. But if you're unlucky... well, hoo-boy! Ever seen "Deliverance"? (European women and American feminists have nothing to worry about: Since you look and smell like lumberjacks anyway, you'll blend right in. Just keep walking bow-legged, let that paunch flap in the wind, and try not to hector any of the real men-folk. If they start to suspect your gender, drop on all fours, bellow like a cow, and huddle against the side of a barn. But if they come at you with milk pails, Run!)
3) The environmentalists are lying. The greenies would have you believe that southern Utah is some kind of Shangri-La -- the Bhutan of the American West. You really think they’re telling the truth? As Ehud Barak once said, famously, about environmentalists: “They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie … creates no dissonance. They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn’t. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as ‘the truth.’” (OK, so he wasn’t actually talking about environmentalists, but he may as well have been).
It’s all a big scam. Groups like SUWA send you pretty postcards and ask you to send them your hard-earned money. It's part of what Mark Steyn calls the "L.L. Bean version of environmental purity," in which coastal elites "are asked to rally to protect places they might like to hike someday." But SUWA doesn't actually want you to come here. To understand this phenomenon, you have to understand environmentalists. An anonymous Internet wise man has identified three kinds: “First, the ‘I got mine environmentalists.’ Basically, these folks move into a pastoral setting and don’t want their view spoiled. They become anti-development. Next, the quasi-religious: No way do they want their Earth Mother getting drilled. Don’t even talk about it. Third, the Anticapitalist: Environmentalism as the last refuge of the Socialist. Formal ownership of property is allowed but no property rights. This avoids one huge drawback of public ownership -- the government taking the rap for failure. Oh, I left out the ‘misanthropic nihilists.’ They’re fun. They hope for an apocalyptic population collapse down to the Earth’s carrying capacity of about 600 million souls. Don’t worry; Gaia will sort ’em out. The survivors can peaceably manure the fields and polish the solar mirrors -- but can they keep their cell phones?” Most Utah environmentalists are “I got mine environmentalists.” I should know, because I’m a Utah environmentalist. I got mine, and I’m telling you: Stay the hell out.
I make a compelling case, no? But you’ve mulled it over, and still think you want to make the trip. Great Scott you're stubborn! What, you slipped into those slinky earth-toned polypropylene undies, and suddenly you're Lawrence of Arabia? What, you think those dangly faux-turquoise earrings and that single catty streak of grey in your hair à la Terry Tempest Williams makes you some kind of high priestess of the desert?
Fine. Have it your way. Welcome to the slickrock jungle, baby. Try not to die. Since I’m feeling generous (and I don't want to have to come save your bony anorexic butt, Lindsey Lohan), I’ll impart some advice that just might help you stay alive:
1) If you're climbing or canyoneering, remember the Rule of Reversibility: Always leave yourself an out. If that means leaving an expensive rope behind at a drop that you probably won’t be able to retrieve -- do it anyway. Ain’t nothing worse than doggy paddling for hours in a cold pothole that you can’t reverse your way out of. Pretty soon the hypothermia sets in, your thrashing limbs turn into so much dead weight, and you’re toast. In the depths of a remote canyon, no one can hear you scream. Happens more often than you’d think. (Oh, and that cell phone of yours may work in Malibu, but here in Utah we tear down cell phone towers; we need the metal to build all those cages we keep dogs and liberals in.)
2) Check the weather. If there’s even a hint of rain anywhere near the headwaters of the canyon you want to hike in, bag the trip, retreat to the nearest motel with Wi-Fi, and spend the evening nodding your head vigorously as you read the latest at Daily Kos on your PowerBook G4. A canyon can “flash” even when the sky is clear overhead. Don’t screw around with this. A flash flood hits a slot canyon with the liquid-equivalent force of an F7 tornado. If you're caught in a flashing canyon with those sequined Nepalese trekking shorts around your ankles, you'll have nobody but yourself to blame. (No, Michael Moore: you won't be able to blame George Bush.)
3) Stay off walls you can’t climb, and out of slots you can’t handle. This ain't a movie, Tom Cruise. Giant clunky mountaineering boots are worthless for climbing and chimneying. I recently had to rescue a guy who’d strung himself out on a cliff near Spooky Gulch in the Escalante. He’d been betrayed by those 10-ton, $400 expedition boots he was wearing: too hard and slick to give any traction, too frickin’ heavy to even lift off the rock. Lightweight composite boots are best for most desert terrain. (And no, George Clooney: Those Moroccan smoking slippers won't work, either.)
5) Be obsessive about exactly where you are, and exactly where you've been. Watch your backtrail. Always carry the appropriate 7.5 series USGS topo maps. (No, J.Lo: You can't delegate this responsibility to any of your personal assistants.)
4) Always bring more water than you think you’ll need -- at least two gallons of water per person, per day. (No, Gwyneth Paltrow: Absinthe doesn't count.)
So there you have it. Assuming that your Richard Gere-like openness has allowed you to condescend to the icky level of my hicksterhood long enough to absorb and accept my advice, you just may survive your visit to the Reddest of the Red States. But don’t for a second think that I’m happy about it. And the next time you’re hiking down canyon, lost in your Progressive Transhumanist reveries, and a sudden little frisson shivers down your back… no, that’s not the ghost of Edward Abbey blessing your passage.
That’s me giving you the Evil Eye. I’m watching from behind a rock, full of wrath. Spitting my breath at you.
E-mail: goldenwebb@hotmail.com |
