INSIGHTS
Originally published in the Deseret News. I’ve been sharing a simple statistic to illustrate the magnitude of Utah’s recent population growth. If you combine natural increase (births minus deaths) and net in-migration over the last five years, Utah has added a population larger than the population of Weber County, Utah’s fourth largest county. It begs…
Originally published in the Deseret News. Analysts call Brexit the great divorce, a slow-motion car crash, a political crisis, a constitutional crisis, a wrecking ball, a mess and a delusion. Brexit is all of these and more. The uncertainty has already caused substantial economic displacement and the hurt continues. As Britain’s parliament meets this week…
Originally published in the Deseret News. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — commonly referred to by her initials AOC — attracts significant attention among political commentators because of her views on Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, a federal jobs guarantee, and a 70 percent tax rate on incomes over $10 million. I’m used to people…
Originally published in the Deseret News. “Rest in the fact of God’s love for you. Let everything that unfolds from now be in the shadow of that fact. God loves you and nothing changes that.” I heard these words spoken by a religious scholar on a recent podcast. The scholar, who is also an ecclesiastical…
Originally published in the Deseret News. Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt served during the state’s longest economic expansion. He once told me, “Decisions more than circumstances really shape our lives and our communities.” It’s a profound statement. We become our actions, not our inheritance. Utah policymakers would do well to keep this aphorism in mind…
Original published in the Deseret News. Dinosaur bones, footprints, eggs and other fossils can be found throughout eastern Utah. It is a paleontologist wonderland because here, in Utah’s coal country, the last dinosaurs came to die. Today, another kind of extinction faces residents in Utah’s coal country. If the economies in Carbon and Emery counties…
Originally published in the Deseret News. I was 10 years old when burglars were arrested at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The intruders had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents to help President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign. In the months that followed, I, like a…
Originally published in Utah Business. While I love the start of a new year, I’m not sure if I’m ready for the dizzying array of political battles that will flood the airwaves and our electronic devices in 2019. We will be hit simultaneously with a capital city mayoral race and the beginning of a two-year…
Originally published in the Deseret News. When I was 9 years old, I woke up before the rest of my family on Christmas morning to take a sneak peek at the gifts. I remember my sense of wonder as I tiptoed down the staircase. The fireplace still gave off a slight glow from the raging…
Originally published in the Deseret News. Utah population estimates released this week confirm a deceleration in growth. Utah births fell to their lowest level in 18 years. With net in-migration also tapering off, Utah’s population increased in 2018 by a healthy but modest 1.69 percent. There are many storylines about Utah’s growth, but of greatest…