Thoughts from a Utahn on strengthening the economy, building community, and promoting civil society.

RECENT INSIGHTS

Finding peace in God’s love

By Natalie Gochnour | 03/07/2019

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…

Why Utah should reform the state sales tax system

By Natalie Gochnour | 02/21/2019

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…

Utah’s coal transition belongs to all of us

By Natalie Gochnour | 02/07/2019

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…

There’s still much to learn from Watergate

By Natalie Gochnour | 01/17/2019

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…

My political projections for 2019

By Natalie Gochnour | 01/05/2019

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…

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