If you’re looking for a somewhat entertaining read, look no further than the response to the Utah Democratic Party’s request for redistricting information. The Office of Legislative Research and General Council (OLRGC) responded to what can only be described as a fishing expedition of a request, a massive trolling net designed to scrape up all [...]

For far too long now, our electoral process has been broken. We often get candidates that are far too beholden to donors and not responsive to those who elected them. We also see a lot of good candidates pushed out of the picture because they refuse to play the “business as usual” games. While a [...]

One of the most important parts of taxation is being able to tell how much you are paying and what is it being spend on. The best example of this transparency in taxation is the itemized property tax bill you get in the mail once a year. You get a break down of how much [...]

Last night, the Utah Legislature finally signed off on a map for Congressional districts. Unsurprisingly, more than a few individuals were engaged in over-the-top weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that could teach William Shanter more than a few things about over-acting. While I can accept a lot of legitimate complaints about the final product [...]

Every decision we make is a calculated risk, trying to figure out if the reward and odds of success are worth the potential pain. Most of the time, we do fairly well. Every now and again, someone, somewhere, will make such a boneheaded miscalculation that the rest of us will scratch our heads and go [...]

I’m not a fan of the Tea Party and haven’t been for some time. As Jon Stewart put it, most of them are moral majoritarians in tri-tipped hats. It’s hard to see how they differ from the Ralph Reed disciples that stormed into the Republican Party in 1994. That said, it seems like what has [...]

Despite being on the same end of the political spectrum, there is a stark contrast between Sutherland Institute and the Utah Taxpayers Association. Most of this boils down to tone and attitude. Another aspect is the level of engagement with the politically involved, and how ideas are found and developed. In the end, it’s the [...]

We all knew that redistricting would be a tough business, but I’m not sure anyone suspected it would be this tough. In addition to the normal partisan concerns, cities and counties are all calling for not being split up into multiple districts. There’s also a dichotomous message of “don’t gerrymander” combined with “don’t make us lose seats [...]

Odds are good that if you want to practice a particular profession or trade, the state requires that you complete a specific course of training, pass some exams, and renew a license with them, sometimes requiring additional training. This is often sold as a way to ensure that everyone in a profession is competent to [...]

This weekend, the Utah GOP decided to effectively ban “troublemaker” Mike Ridgway from the party entirely. This comes after a long line of public intra-party fights, nasty name-calling, and legal wrangling. His detractors accuse him of “bad behavior” including “intimidation” and “threats”, but without citing much of anything in the way of specific incidences. Ridgway [...]